


Khem's Codices

by Fionavar



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Backstory, Campaign Notes, In-Character Journalling, Red Wizards of Thay, much of it contextless
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2019-06-28 05:49:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 77,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15701094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionavar/pseuds/Fionavar
Summary: The Red Wizard Khemuret Xul has been travelling with some very strange individuals. She records her thoughts about them and the events they're involved in. Expect paranoia, skewed logic, snotty comments about everything, and crazy prophetic nightmares. Even the occasional emotion - but don't say that where Khem can hear you.





	1. Codex Entry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onemooncircles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onemooncircles/gifts), [codenamecynic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenamecynic/gifts), [Dakoyone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dakoyone/gifts), [bettydice](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=bettydice).



> This was written when the game had only just started and I didn’t actually know too much about our characters yet. You can see a few inconsistencies with later events/lore/characterisation.

_This text is written in a fiendishly difficult encryption, consisting of at least two different ciphers per page. It is difficult to infer reading order; on some pages the writing flows across the page in the left-to-right fashion of Common, on others it appears to spiral out from a central point, while others appear horizontal or completely random. A multitude of different coloured inks form part of the coding. Once the text has been decrypted, the reader must be fluent in Thayan Mulhorandi, Draconic and Infernal, and possess a basic understanding of Undercommon for the later pages, as the journal is written in a peculiar mixture of the vocabulary and grammar of all four languages._

This is a calculated risk. There are certain of my thoughts and secrets that must be preserved and not simply remembered. Neither method is secure, of course… any mind is open to one sufficiently skilled, and if my own mind were to be broken, these petty ciphers would be easily extracted. For the moment, my own positioning is protection enough: I am seen as powerful enough to be useful, but not enough to be a threat, and there are few enough of my rivals or clique who are perspicacious enough to make a better assessment.

Nebastis appears to be playing a similar game, but her analysis of the situation on the Alaor betrayed an overly acute understanding of the historical forces at play. I believe she would be worth cultivating…

_A span of pages, some of which appears to describe the daily life of a Red Wizard student, some to record dreams, some to be detailed equations or spellwork diagrams, and one which is a poorly-drawn depiction of a wyvern and a phoenix in battle._

… all arranged with Nebastis. I have paid the doorkeeper the customary amount to ensure we won’t be disturbed. He probably supplements his income handsomely by guarding these little trysts – but there are simply not that many pieces of neutral territory within the Academy, and at times ambition and caution must give way to more primal needs.

She said, “I trust you.” I could never have guessed how exciting – how _erotic –_ those three words could be.

She watches my lips, and licks hers.

I watch her fingers – their slender shape, their clever, delicate movements – and I imagine.

I have never known impatience like this, as though fire burns beneath my skin. Nebastis. Less than hour remains.

_The next entry is on the same page. The time marker indicated a span of one hour and twenty minutes since the commencement of the previous entry._

That was eminently satisfying. It appears I had credited Nebastis with far more cunning than she deserved. When she said that she trusted me and that she desired me, she was being entirely truthful. She did not even look twice at the spells I had cast around our meeting place.

So she is eliminated, and with less effort than it took to remove Pteptah or Se-atma from the game board. I am almost ready to neutralise Nofet.

_A good deal of what follows is undeciphered at present, but proper names and ‘eliminated’ tends to recur, as do dreams about ‘the Erratic’, ‘the Silent’, ‘the Thirsty’ and skulls, buried beneath mountains and by water._

… The monastery of the Long Death is a known quantity, of course, but individual monks remain unpredictable variables. I have recognised this Shayazi assigned to me as one of the recurring, although I am not certain which she represents as yet. The monks do refer to death as the ‘Silent Lord’… Still, a preliminary assessment is necessary.

Physically, she poses a deadly threat. The monks’ training is extensive, honing her naturally muscular form into a mechanism that will strike both swiftly and with certainty. She would be difficult to catch off-guard. She evidences no magic, whether innate, studied or talismanic. By preference, she fights in melee; I would keep her at range should it become necessary to neutralise her. Spells that target her strength of personality would probably succeed, as she appears to spend much of her energy on controlling an innate rage… no doubt the curse of her orcish heritage. How glad I am for the superiority of my pure Mulan blood! She also appears to have an inexhaustible appetite and capacity for alcohol, and so is eminently suitable for a properly calibrated dose of the correct poison.

Shayazi is not stupid, but the monks’ education was certainly… limited. She is so focused on her pointless studies of thanatology (not uninteresting, admittedly, but impractical) that she would be easy to deceive on any matter that fell outside that narrow scope. Nor do I believe that the Long Death monks learn the ruthless political manoeuvring which is a part of Academy life, which is doubtless why the Red Wizards rule Thay and the monks play no significant role in the wider world.

For the moment, however, she appears to perceive my protection as a duty, and one she takes very seriously indeed. I shall encourage her to continue in that vein by any means necessary. She cannot be trusted, of course, but she is undeniably an asset as long she chooses to be so. She balances many of my weaknesses, and she is, moreover, enjoyable company. It is, of course, entirely possible that much of my current assessment is flawed, depending on Shayazi’s ability to dissimulate. I shall continue to monitor and reassess.

_Additional notes appear to follow at various dates and times. The following pages seem to detail the writer’s experiences of a long voyage by sea, including some difficulty with sea-sickness. Dreams of eyes, and a woman who cuts off her hand and laughs for joy, predominate._

Initial Assessment: Khetad? Kheteeth? Mornir? Mulnar? That sorceress.

I know she is one of the recurring, and therefore necessary in some measure to my goals. At the same time, I find myself thinking longingly of all the ways to strip a sorceress of their magic and make them _useful_. She is a sterling example of all the worst traits of her kind. She relies on poorly-understood and internalised processes to wield magic that was left in her blood by some remote ancestor. It is alien to the wizards’ way of controlled and disciplined magic earned by effort; it is sloppy, disorganised, and inelegant in every way.

In situations like these, however, it has its advantages for me. It is possible to map at least some of the spells at her command; sorcerers do not learn quickly. It can be surmised that she has more spells than these, if she follows the usual developmental pattern for sorcerers.

Cantrips: Fire Bolt (used to light a candle, and offensively). Ray of Frost (used to cool her drink, and offensively). Shocking Grasp (used when pinching Harper’s buttocks, when he was looking at a barmaid). Prestigitation (used for numerous flashy effects to prop up her projected image of dangerous sorceress, including redoing her cosmetics).

Level 1: Magic Missile (fired in the air to impress a customs officer. Failed). Thunderwave (used against a gang of attacking kobolds. Effective).

Level 2: Shatter (attack of ogres. Destroyed several of the caravans we were travelling with).

I have never met anyone quite so childish, and that includes actual children. She is obsessed with maintaining her ‘dangerous Elven sorceress’ image, and so would be uniquely vulnerable to manipulation aimed at that point. Any Suggestion along the lines of ‘A sorceress as powerful as you should be able to –‘ should succeed admirably. Unless, of course, this is a manufactured flaw. Sometimes she seems too insistent on her part to be genuine in it.

It is maddening, however, that she amuses many of those we have met, instead of rightly garnering irritation or contempt. It must be some peculiarity of all these illogical people. I miss my Academy, where motivations and behaviours made sense, where I knew the rules by which everyone played…

In short, I believe I could neutralise this Khayteed, if she were isolated, under most circumstances. I do not believe she plans well, and she seems too self-obsessed to study others well; I doubt she would see me coming. An overt attack is even less desirable than usual, given her focus on Evocation magic, although if Shay could be manipulated properly, she would make an excellent counter. However, in most conceivable situations which involve eliminating Khedded, Taliesin Harper must be considered.

Initial Assessment: Taliesin Harper.

By far the most conspicuous threat of all the recurring – not least because my Detect Thoughts failed. He remains too much of an unknown at this point. He has clearly trained with both melee and ranged weaponry; he appears to favour the former, but it is too early to be sure. He could certainly put an arrow in Shay before she could reach him. He seems intelligent and socially capable, and I am inclined to believe that he could play a part better than most. Sometimes he reminds me of others I knew back home…

It is so difficult to make any useful observations. His motivations are completely unknown. He and Kheited seem to have been travelling together for some time. She regards him as her property, but his attitude towards her is harder to place. For the present I can only assume that she is beneficial, in some measure, to whatever his plans truly are, but it is all so nebulous. He has attempted some flirtation with me, upon occasion; I am not minded to encourage it until I have a clearer understanding of why, and of whether the danger he presents outweighs the possible benefits.

He is on his own territory, and he understands the ways power is expressed and controlled in this land; I am far from my Academy. If the situation were reversed, he would be easy prey. As it is, I must be exceedingly cautious. He would not be as easy to Suggest as Khedit; his weaknesses are not so well displayed. He has not, as yet, exhibited any habits which could be leveraged to my advantage. I am acutely aware that most of my study has been aimed to help me neutralise other spellcasters. So much more information is necessary before I can plan effectively… I _despise_ feeling this vulnerable.

_More observations and dreams follow, as well as several pages of potential strategies for learning more of the individuals the writer has assessed. Many have been crossed out or marked as ‘impractical’, ‘obvious’ or ‘dangerous’._

I am very ready to be out of this rain. What sort of developmentally-damaged masochists would choose to dwell in a climate like this? Still, I am informed that we should reach Waterdeep tomorrow evening…


	2. Codex #2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khem beats herself up and yells about Jarnath Vierin. At this point he has dropped the pretence of being a human named Garrod Drake, got them to take him down to Skullport, and cheated them once. Harper promised to kill the high priestess of Tyr in Waterdeep for Jarnath, if he helped them get to the Underdark ruins of Philock, where the Red Wizards believe there is a priceless Netherese tome to be reclaimed.

_These pages of the journal are notably different from those that precede it. While the text is still an encrypted mixture of Thayan Mulhorandi, Infernal, Common and Undercommon, the decryption is relatively simple, keyed to an Infernal rendering of ‘May a thousand baatezu thread that drow’s entrails from anus to epiglottis with his own oily tongue and a rusty morningstar’._

_Moreover, the pen has stabbed through the page at several points._

I have been incredibly stupid. If I had been this moronic, this gullible, this thoughtless at home, I would have been better born a slave. I would have lived a longer and more pleasant life as a subject for Khaseth’s experiments in divinatory vivisection and gut-fondling. I deserve to have my tattoos flayed from my skull and to strangle on my red robe.

I have let down my guard. I have been _careless._

I have allowed myself to operate under the ridiculous assumption that everyone else outside Thay is as witless as my companions appear to be.

As a result, I have aided in conveying a drow to the Underdark and more-or-less given him a ship. He has defaulted on the reward we were offered, and while it was of negligible interest to me personally, it remains an irritant. Very well. I hate that I have been outplayed and manipulated into a position of another’s choosing, but I can accept it. I am hardly a stranger to the role of psateth-atka ( _a Thayan word, whose connotations do not permit an exact translation, but ‘one who feigns subservience and usefulness while she gains another’s measure, lays her plans accordingly, and then strikes at the decisive moment’ is one way of putting it; ‘the patient serpent pretends to be an ox until she spits her venom’ is another)._ I have leveraged worse disadvantages into successful outcomes.

I took a risk informing the others of the contents of that letter (another gamble, of course. If I were utterly averse to taking risks towards my goals, I would certainly never have left Thay – at least, not free-willed or alive), and I completely misjudged it. I specifically pointed out to Harper several reasons – all of which should have been obvious! – why I did not wish to have the drow accompany us to Philock. For whatever reason – hormonal or in service of his own goals – Harper completely ignored this. The oleaginous piece of Lloth sputum is to be our guide.

Fine. That, too, I can accept. A drow guide in the Underdark who possesses a vested interest in seeing us return safely to the surface would be a useful resource indeed, and possibly the description has sufficient in common with that arrogant, supercilious son of an otyugh to grant us a measure of safety in traversing one of the most inhospitable environments in Faerûn. My misgivings on the subject are near-endless, but chief among them are a) it would be trivially simple for him to betray us under these circumstances; b) while he may want the Tyrran dead, we are utterly disposable or else he would not have chosen us for the task; c) if the potential prize is substantial enough to come to the attention of the Red Wizards, it is certainly something the drow would want.

For the sake of completeness, I should add the completely obvious: this tome may not exist. It is entirely possible that the Ambassador to Waterdeep intended her letter to lure myself, any of those from the Thayan Enclave, or any of their known associates for menial tasks, into a trap laid at Philock. I shall prepare for that possibility as well; if I can leverage it to dispose of inconveniences and dangers, I shall be well pleased.

What was said in front of the syphilitic, soot-stained spider-spawn was almost harmless. Admittedly Harper was less than adept at concealing the fact that I expected to find something specific in the ruins of Philock, but only the husk of an illithid’s meal would believe I’d go out into the Underdark for whimsy or to satisfy some nebulous curiosity.

No. The danger, the _idiocy_ , is that I explained exactly what I was looking for to the others.  In an unsecured room. Which the revolting, pointy-eared grease-stain has had access to for an unspecified amount of time. After I knew he possessed some spell-casting ability. After he gave Katy an ostentatious hat, which I _did not check_ for enchantment. The inn is owned by a spell-caster of at least sufficient skill to animate a skeleton, and his affiliations are unknown. There is a displacer beast which seems to live here. The walls and door are none too solid.

And it is for _this_ that I cannot forgive myself. I have neither enough ink nor enough pages in this journal to detail all the means by which _anyone_ might have heard what I was saying. My stupidity is staggering. I am a Divination specialist, a Red Wizard of Thay; I _know_ magical eavesdropping, and I took no precautions. I have been away from home too long.

The situation, I hope, is not irredeemable, but I cannot afford to continue making errors of this sort. I must remember who I am, and how I have survived. This damnable drow has manoeuvred me to his liking; let it be so for now. He quoted an Underdark saying: well, this is a Thayan one that is equally worth remembering.

_The following eight words are written in Thayan Mulhorandi. Set by themselves in the middle of the page, they are the only unencrypted letters in the entire journal._

Any tool worth using cuts the wielder’s hand.


	3. Codex #3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the way to Philock, Khem waxes paranoiac (more so than usual) about new developments in her party members.

_The encryptions acquire a new layer of complexity at this point, as though the writer has grown more creative, more intelligent, more paranoid, or all three. As well as the devices formerly used, the writer has started using a system of scattered dots – some raised, some dug into the page, and some developed into tears – as well as directly encoding the text into diagrams and drawings, so that what appears to be a graph is in fact a description of a fight against flumphs, minotaur skeletons and a flameskull, while a lovingly-rendered sketch of a dozing displacer beast conceals a furious tirade against sorceresses and illithids._

… Threat Assessment: Shayazi (9th revision)

Shay continues to develop her skills; I suspect her elders at the monastery will be pleasantly surprised by her progress when we return. My own capacities likewise increase; my options to deal with her, should it become necessary, are more varied and likely to be efficacious than previously. As in previous revisions, the key is to keep my distance and to strike first. There are only two issues prompting this update to her previous threat assessment. 

The first is this new power she has developed since her experience with the clerics of Yurtrus. It is, of course, counter-productive to ignore the very real impact the gods can have on the world, either directly or through the actions of their idiot faithful. I would not have predicted that Shay would choose to align herself with such parasitic, demanding and arrogant creatures; I will even confess to a small disappointment. I had a higher opinion of her than that. Nevertheless, I cannot deny that it has earned her power. I have not seen her use it often enough to be entirely certain of its purpose, which is concerning, and, having opened the door to divine interference in her life, it is difficult to see where it may stop. I shall monitor her for developments.

The second is possibly more concerning. Harper continues to ingratiate himself with her, quite blatantly, and I am unsure how to counter him. She is supposed to be my bodyguard, but I confess I have been depending unduly on her own sense of duty. The means I would use to cultivate another Red Wizard are almost meaningless to her, and although I am learning as swiftly as I can, the fact remains that Harper is more familiar with such tactics. If I should lose her to him, the balance tips dangerously out of my favour… My advantage, I think, is that I know the Order of the Long Death tolerably well, and what Shay has been used to within its walls; I can leverage that, but then Harper’s manoeuvring against her inexperience is covering much the same ground.  Brothels, really? That is not ground on which I will compete. Gifts, perhaps? She and Twitch seem to have developed something of a rapport – perhaps that Bag of Tricks I saw in the bazaar would amuse her?

_A span as yet decrypted follows, eventually clearing into the following passage. In contrast to the tone, the writing remains steady and even._

… he spoke, and I raised my hands to my eyes and gouged them out. I gave them to him, and he mounted them in his rotting eye sockets. It took exactly seven strokes of the dull blade to sever my tongue. My mouth filled with blood, washing the spells away. Then I forced the blade through my left wrist. It stuck halfway, and I screamed that I could not obey until he set his hand over mine and freed the blade. Twenty-three strokes to cut off my left hand. Thirty total, average fifteen. I begged him to help me. I could not cut off my right hand without help. I promised him anything he desired, if only he would help me sever it as he wished. He said the means was within my power. I set my teeth to my right wrist. Blood and blood. Crack and crack. Again. Two hundred and sixty-one. Seven. Fractions. Twenty-three. Again. Thirty. Broken numbers. Fifteen. Broken. Again.

\- I did not recognise the voice. I am unsure what this dream portends, but at least it was relatively mild. I was more disturbed when it changed and I felt them again. All those mage hands all over me. All of them watching and laughing. I thought I’d trained my subconscious out of replaying that particular memory. Probably the alcohol was to blame; I had similarly undisciplined and unpleasant memories in place of useful dreams after Khaseth poisoned me.

Still, these things pass. It is more important that I retain clear memory of everything that occurred while I was so stupidly drunk, and more important still that I did said or did nothing irredeemable. In fact, my training held almost perfectly; with one exception, everything I _babbled_ about could either have been gleaned from commonly-available sources, or reasonably extrapolated from them. Or, indeed, from my observable behaviour. The exception, of course, is that while Harper could have safely assumed that I distrust him and wish to penetrate whatever it is that veils his mind, he was extremely unlikely to have guessed that I considered Banishing him. His reaction to that was a little curious, I think… I am still not convinced that he is human.

My mouth still tastes of stale blood, my brain feels rather as though someone is carving its sulci deeper with an acid-coated awl, and we set out into the Underdark today. I truly have become dangerously stupid out here. I suppose that is one good thing to be said for the presence of the drow; I have someone to keep me from drifting entirely into poor habits. 

_The next few pages contain disdainful descriptions of a wide variety of fungus._

… Threat assessment: Katy (6th revision)

Wild Magic effects: Invisibility on others but not herself; pink, feathery beard. Inanities.

New spell observed: Hex.

Katy has become far more adept with her magic, to the point where her effectiveness in a recent battle came perilously close to matching my own. I am not averse to letting her waste her spell energy, but nevertheless… this sudden increase in her usefulness in concerning. I might be mistaken about divine magic, but not this. Hex is not a usual manifestation of sorcerer magic; it is a warlock spell.

She would not be the first sorcerer to realise her haphazard innate magic is not sufficient, and to turn to other means of procuring power. The warlock pact has always stood ready for such fools. It would also, possibly, explain the peculiar creature she summoned and called Bob; it could easily be a manifestation of her patron, or a creature that answers to it. If she has indeed sold herself to a patron, it falls on me to discern what manner of being it is, and what its motivations are likely to be. Some of the beings known to sponsor warlocks are highly inimical, while others are simply unknowable. There is no telling what actions it may require of Katy.

Of course, there is the possibility that I am getting ahead of myself. There are other means by which Katy might have acquired a warlock spell, not least that it may simply be an unusual quirk of her wild magic. Nevertheless, I judge her quite likely to have made such a pact. I will watch her behaviour closely for evidence for or against this hypothesis. I also intend to question her about that summoned creature, and possibly study it for myself. It seemed to have an unhealthy influence over her.

_…_ cannot shake the feeling I am overlooking something obvious. The letter to Metoth Zurn must have been intended as a test for me; there are myriad secure ways that wizards such as he and Anishta Daraam could communicate. There is a portal between their territories, for Szass Tam’s sake: they could have spoken in person! I probably performed much to expectations – that is, not sufficiently well to avoid putting myself in a vulnerable position. What is the relationship between those two? Why would she inform him of an artefact and potential influence to be gained instead of going after it herself, if it were genuine?

The whole affair makes much more sense if it is not – but, then, it could hardly be aimed at Metoth Zurn, as he would hardly go after it himself. Unless the artefact itself exists as a threat to him… There are too many unknowns at present.

It would make more sense still if it were all directed at me, but I have hardly done anything to mark myself for disposal – unless Anishta Daraam is oversensitive about perceived disrespect. Which she might well be, given that her blue eyes clearly mark her blood as impure. I can more easily understand why one of the others at the Skullport Enclave might wish to remove me: I would turn a wary eye myself on someone who had a personal audience with the head of my Academy, who then made a public showing of her prowess, asked for uncommon materials, and went on expedition. But the letter predates that. If, then, this is truly aimed at me, it must be orchestrated out of Thay. It would not have been too difficult to arrange. I must think more on the rivals I left behind me…

… Threat assessment: Taliesin Harper (23rd revision).

This man is taking up far too much of my precious thinking time. Nor do I expect the situation to resolve soon; almost every time I approach him with questions – of which I have many, after some of the things he said or implied during that unfortunate drinking session – he is otherwise occupied, obviously not disposed towards inquiry, or forestalls me by asking a flurry of his own questions. It’s not that I mind answering, since almost everything so far has either been obvious (are you homesick, then?) or utterly pointless (so why go back?) – it’s the _time_ it takes. It would seem counter-productive to refuse to answer or to tell him to shut up so I can take a turn (and I can all-too-easily envisage the infuriating smirk that would answer me if I said anything so foolish). So, among other things, this revision marks yet another conversational weapon.

Well. He gave me a look with a distinct ‘I intend to castigate you later’ overtones after I confirmed my hypothesis about the drow and his relationship with Lloth. Possibly after such a conversation, if I can appear sufficiently contrite, I might have an opportunity to interrogate him. Such information, naturally, is unreliable – I know he is an accomplished liar – but anything is better than the mystery he currently presents.

He continues to spread his pernicious influence among the group. He already had Katy under reasonable control when we met; as noted in Shay’s last assessment, he appears to have made alarming inroads there as well. It is more difficult to judge his progress with the drow – not least because their conversations are almost invariably nauseating – but at the very least, he is more courteous with Harper, and seems more inclined to listen to him. He certainly places Harper as the leader of this disparate little group, when anyone with even a passing familiarity with my order should cast me in that role. In any case, it is probably safe enough to assume that when Harper makes the move for which he has been gathering so much support, the drow is likely to side with him.

He still has not displayed any magic beyond whatever it is that shields his mind. Furthermore, while he continues to grow stronger and swifter in combat, he has shown no unusual development at this point. However, he has grown sufficiently talented in stealth to successfully approach the drow undetected. This is of severe concern.

I know I have not verbally told him more than I wished to at any point, but I suspect that has not been enough. If I could survey his thoughts I could glean a more accurate assessment of what he has deduced about me and my capabilities, and I would feel a great deal safer. I know he is attempting to manoeuvre me into some position, but I do not know what that is, or what he wants. He remains one of the most dangerous threats I have encountered, and it seems that I still need him. I _must_ be more cautious, and I must learn more.

… bitterness on the wind, less pungent that the acidic decay in the black water roiling around me. The Silent is unheard. Lashing tentacles, a host of mouths all over its body. The Thirsty is taking notes.  One eye, larger than the mind can hold. The drow laughs. Eighteen. Teeth, black in black mouth in black water. Twenty-five thousand, two hundred and five point six. The Erratic vows vengeance for a hat. Tentacles snaking around my wrists, tearing my hands free. Blood in black water, laughter like ashes on the wind.

\- Again this… dehanding… element surfaces. Two main connotations continue to occur to me. The Tyrran – although there is some confusion, since Tyr is represented with one missing hand, not two, and still called by the epithet ‘the Even-handed’. And, of course, it may also be emblematic of the loss of power, especially when it is my own hands. In any case, it has surfaced often enough to be of concern. Also a point worth noting: this dream marks the first in which all three of the recurring can be clearly identified, and the first in which the drow appears at all. This is disturbing on a number of levels.

Threat Assessment: The drow (4rd revision/6th including Garrod Drake’s entries)

New spell observed: Mass Healing Word. This is definitely indicative. As far as I can remember from my brief study of divine magic, this is solely the province of clerics. This raises three queries. 1) Do I recall correctly? Divine magic is not particularly interesting, and my notes on the subject are long ago destroyed. There might be other disciplines with access to the spell. 2) Did I observe correctly? It might have been some other spells with a similar effect, and I was not particularly close to him. 3) How did he cast it? Scrolls and other enchanted items are only the most obvious ways to cast a spell to which you would ordinarily have no access.

If, however, I do remember and did observe correctly that he cast Mass Healing Word, it strongly suggests that he might have some cleric training. This correlates moderately well with his obvious issues with spiders and his status as a male drow. Lloth despises males and does not permit them among her clergy. He must follow some other deity (as strange a thing that is to speculate about someone so obviously capable in his own right). I cannot seriously imagine him worshipping an idiot goddess of dancing naked in the moonlight, and Eilistraee is the only other member of the Dark Seldarine I recall at present. Of course, he might have chosen the god of some other pantheon entirely to fellate in exchange for power. Mask, perhaps? In any case, while this hypothesis seems sturdy enough to guide my actions, it demands further evidence.

I suspect the others do not truly understand just how dangerous he is. Like myself, he was born into a society of power-hungry individuals, his value only in his use to those above him in power or in what he carved out for himself. Temporary alliances bound for betrayal, an innately dangerous world around him, a certainty of death or something much less pleasant as punishment for mistakes. Like myself, he’s survived so far, which marks him as an individual of cunning, ambition, and cleverness. However, there is one crucial difference: I am a Red Wizard, and, as such, one of the ruling class of Thay. My enemies are, for the most part, roughly my equals in power. The drow, on the other hand, is a male – part of the lowest possible classes in his society, deliberately kept subjugated. He has therefore risen respectively further than I have, has probably maintained his position longer (given drow lifespans in comparison to human) and so, is _better at this than I am._

He is also on his own territory here. His advantages cannot be overstated. I wish I had found a means and opportunity to speak to that drow who warned us not to ally, even temporarily, with our guide. I might have learned something of use.

The drow knows my order well enough, probably, to predict my actions – one reason why I decided to try a tactic borrowed from Harper and offer an apology for needling him about the spider corpses. It was not as difficult as I thought it would be, although still I disliked doing it. His reaction was also satisfying, if inconvenient. It is a distinct relief to speak to someone who sees the world as it is, and respects me sufficiently to assume that I have good reasons for what I do.

If the moment were right, I could disable him. At the very least. I occasionally entertain the image of Animating his corpse and forcing it through all sorts of indignities. Pleasant as the thought of the drow grovelling at my feet is, it would probably not be worth antagonising Shay or the chance someone would resurrect it.

_The next page is encoded as a drawing of a rotting, kneeling drow._


	4. Codex #4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khem has complicated feeling about almost dying in a fight, due to a drow spellcaster with Cloudkill and Katy's Wild Magic with a Fireball.   
> And about the fact that Harper saved her life.   
> And about the Netherese tome she was sent to retrieve.

_The following pages are among the more difficult to decrypt in the journal, as the writer was clearly disturbed by these events recorded. The handwriting is hurried and near-illegible in places. There are genuine mistakes in the text that alter the meaning (see: use of Draconic ‘grk-hssp’ or ‘spell-energy’ in place of ‘grakh-yssth’ or ‘existence’) and several errors in the encryption that misdirected translators._

_…_ very little left, after panicking and Polymorphing Shay just to get her free of the gelatinous cube. Then one thing after another – the first cloudkill, the drow with the greatsword… Evard’s Black Tentacles. It is _pathetic_ how little it took to reduce me to a mewling, quivering child, helpless, hearing that laughter and feeling _(there is an angry scribble obliterating several words, easily mistaken for part of the encryption)._ Then, of course, Katy’s magic went rogue – she can’t ordinarily cast fireball - just before the drow got off another cloudkill. I can taste it now, and I remember knowing that I had one chance to get through it before I would lose consciousness. And I failed. It should have been death. 

Instead, Harper ran into the field, got me out and stabilised me.

He has said that he means me no harm, that he would help, that he would see this done. It can’t be that simple. He is an intelligent and dangerous man, exceedingly skilled in [ _the Mulhorandi word used here could be translated into Common as ‘politics’, ‘interpersonal dynamics’, or ‘manipulation’_ ]. If you save a life, you must have some further use for it in mind – it’s not an unusual manoeuvre – but in that case, it would be as counterproductive as it was insulting to decline the debt I acknowledged. What in all the Infinite Abyss is his objective?

What does he _want_ from me?

Katy is being irritatingly melodramatic about the whole affair. Anyone with a brain in their head and any familiarity with the Weave can feel the difference between a spell she’s purposefully cast and when her magic goes wild. It’s a wonder any sorcerer survives their own magic – instinct is no substitute for conscious, reasoned control. In the interests of avoiding a repeat incident, I’ve offered to try and teach her. I entertain doubts about the efficacy of the whole business. She’s a child still, but one very set in her undisciplined ways – also, I’ve little knowledge of wild magic, the messy, chaotic, inelegant blight on the Weave that it is - and I very much doubt that the exercises that novice wizards are taught will be much help to her. We approach magic from completely opposite directions. Still. I’ll find a way. I refuse to be defeated by anything so minor as an uncontrolled sorceress and her unshaped magic.

Shay continues to be her contained, sensible self. It is a relief to be able to have a sane conversation in a civilised language with someone whose motives are largely known and whose background is similar enough that I do not have to struggle to make myself understood. I must be more careful; I would not like her to have to return home and confess failure to her elders, and not only because I would be dead at that point.

I suspect I’ll never forget the first time I visited the monastery. I am not squeamish, but I do not comprehend unnecessary cruelty. There is a point beyond which punishment or torture becomes ineffective, even as a deterrent for its witnesses. The monks passed it long ago. There was one specimen; most of his internal organs had been externalised for the education of twenty years’ worth of novice monks. The scarring, the burns, grafts, stitching on the living surface of his lungs… not something I would willingly bring on Shay.

…absolute darkness. Not the mere absence of light, but a void that actively obliterates it. Seventeen. The touch of darkness is a fluid netting, like veins or cobwebs, a warm almost-pressure against my face, enmeshing my hands. Thirty-five. Two serpentine figures, dividing and becoming men, then coming together again. Exchanges of matter.

That part of the dream is easy enough to record. After that… well. I was watching and I was the medium in which they moved, and if the images were unspecific, the sensations were not. I haven’t been troubled by desire that intense in years. There was fear, too, and a sense of familiarity about the men. I thought at one point it might be any pairing of Faraghor, Halvren or Vannos, if it were some trick of my subconscious, but it had the depth and cadence of a genuine dream. I hope it wasn’t, given that such dreams have a tendency to recur – in whole or in element - and once was unsettling enough.

It keeps teasing at the back of my mind - perhaps because of that unplaced sense of familiarity, perhaps because of the lingering and unwelcome disquiet. Inevitable, when control cracks, but nothing I haven’t dealt with before.

_(the following line wanders upward and overlaps with previous lines, as though the writer was no longer looking at the page)_

Stop watching me write, Harper. I can feel you smirking.

… it’s beautiful. One spell, several days of intense study, and all its secrets would be mine. My fingertips itch, and only touching the spine really soothes them. But I have to _think_.

My position is not strong enough. As an outsider to the Skullport Enclave, I was always going to attract attention – rather more of it than is compatible with my favoured approaches – and my display in the Tournament was not sufficiently intimidating to make any potential rivals among the Enclave Red Wizards think twice. Any good that might have come from it, I probably undid by my idiotic visit the day before we left. I expect, and have warned the others, that someone will try to claim my prize soon.

There are several options open to me, and myriad ways to achieve them.

Katy’s suggestion to simply walk away with the tome is ludicrous. I see little reason for it… unless she believes that I would unable to adapt or survive outside the order, and would thereby become more dependent, easily exploitable to her ends. She’s shown little sign of that order of thought, but it never pays to underestimate someone. Certainly Harper is capable of that sort of planning, and he could easily steer her in the correct direction… My early training has not left me well-suited me for life out here, true, but I am stronger than they think, and I certainly have no intention of abandoning my life’s purpose for an ill-defined whim.

If I handed it back intact… I would want some leverage to ensure that I was adequately rewarded. Difficult, but not impossible. The main fault with this is, of course, the sacrifice it entails. I want this tome, but there are things I may want more. The possible favour of Metoth Zurn. My advancement in the order. Not to antagonise Zurn further, or to make an enemy of the complete unknown to whom he intended to give the book – assuming the original letter can be trusted in that regard. Skullport is Zurn’s territory, Waterdeep is Daraam’s, and I have their attention now; this is a poor time for risks. My own allies are clearly marked as such and vulnerable.

What Red Wizard worth her robes would walk into the same trap twice?

And yet, I keep tempting myself with the tome. How to use it, then give it to Zurn; how to cover my tracks, assuming he expects it to be active. On one hand, a century is not much time for someone sustained by necromancy; on the other, nobody likes to wait for their advantages. If I had thirty days, Nystul’s Magic Aura could make it appear active – but at the end of the study period, it would be obvious that something was wrong. Moot point; forty-eight hours would not be enough time to put myself entirely out of reach of Zurn or Daraam. I could use a scapegoat.

I have finally mastered Teleportation Circle and Nondetection (absurd, that the latter should have eluded me for so long, however little I like the concept), both of which may prove useful in the near future. It’s pleasing to finally have a use for the two sigil sequences I have memorised.

Interesting developments with Harper. It would appear that, after all these weeks of… I would write ‘innuendo’, but I believe that word suggests a degree of subtlety… they have found a moment of privacy for sex. Or, at least, Harper is willing to have us believe that’s the case, and I estimate the probability is high. Curious, and potentially troubling. I gave him the piece of advice that saved me in similar situations. I know Harper’s value; the drow remains an unknown and extremely dangerous factor.

He thanked me for helping Katy, despite the fact I’ve taught her nothing as yet. He didn’t deny he was kvaleth _(a Mulhorandi word, not widely used outside Thay. ‘Superior’, ‘ascendant’, ‘dominant’, or ‘senior’ are possible Common translations, as are ‘responsible’, ‘with power’, ‘with authority’, ‘owed obedience’ and ‘owing protection’)_ to Katy in their alliance, but appeared genuinely grateful that I’d offered to teach her what he could not. It’s understandable that he would wish her magic under better control, I suppose – it could just as easily have been him within range of her fireball – but perhaps he is not fostering her dependence on him as carefully as I’d thought. He also winced, quite visibly, when I used the word ‘responsible’. Interesting. I suspect it might have something to do with his past, but I still lack sufficient information. 

He said he would like Shay and myself to stay with them – giving further weight to the possibility that he was the one behind Katy’s suggestion that I simply walk away from my order. He also raised the subject several weeks before she did. I wish I knew what he was planning.

Shay seems to be drinking less. Possibly she’s come to the end of her alcohol supply after two weeks out in the Underdark, but I suspect there is something else afoot. I deem it inadvisable to press too hard. It appears that Shay may wish to leave the Long Death, but doesn’t believe it’s possible. As I told her, I think it unlikely they could do anything to track her that could not be dealt with, if that was her choice. Here I am, disdaining Harper for not keeping close control of his wastet-le _(another Thayan term, the counterpart of the last difficult-to-translate one, indicating the ‘junior’, ‘inferior’, ‘obedient’, ‘protected’ or ‘lesser’ partner in an alliance),_ while I stand ready to sever the foundation of my alliance with Shay at her word. But I t- ( _a large ink blot follows the broken word, suggesting that the writer left her pen sitting on the page for some time)._

Szass Tam’s pickled _balls._

That would be problematic. It appears to be true.

I will have to think about this, and whether I shall inform her of it.

_The rest of the page is left blank. When the text resumes, the handwriting is unusually slanted and untidy, and the encryption is almost cursory; the writer appears to have been in a hurry._

Well, how intriguing. Harper has escorted the drow just outside the Tiny Hut spell and is asking him questions. Which the drow is answering. Harper has (present tense, presumably the survivor in control of the family business) a cleric brother, possible fit with some of the things he’s said about the gods. Point of killing the Tyrran? Gave the truth before, impeding activities of his organisation. Difficulties of being on the wrong side of so many gods? The drow implies feeling responsible for an entire people, which requires him to provoke divine wrath, and there is nobody else who would do it properly, ‘we can’t choose whether the gods favour us or not’. Deity he serves? Harper wouldn’t recognise the name, but has nothing to fear on that account. Teach Khem the trick of navigating to Skullport? Shrewd request, will do so on our return.

_The usual intricate encryption resumes at this point._

I am exceedingly impressed. That was a great deal of very useful information Harper extracted – and where I could hear it for myself, too, not merely reported to me. Of course, the drow might have been lying – one assumes he is familiar with the properties of the Tiny Hut spell - but it didn’t sound that way. For what that’s worth. I am more interested in Harper’s choice of action, although I will not read too much into it. He is far too good at what he does.

I suppose I should try to sleep… but time is too valuable at this point. What will I do with this lovely book in my lap?


	5. Codex #5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khem decides to read the tome, then return it to her superiors under the pretence that she found it that way. She teleports back and leaves the party about a day’s journey away from Skullport.  
> This causes interparty tension.  
> Khem has a major loss of confidence.

…never had to concentrate so hard in my life. Most of the Academy’s lessons came naturally – oh, they were hard work, certainly, but it never felt as though my brain was physically being warped into a new shape to accommodate the knowledge. Some of these ideas, these concepts, cannot be expressed in any other language… the way Netherese saw their magic and handled it is so completely different to anything suggested by any other theorist I’ve ever encountered. The magic of the tome may be depleted now, but even so, it’s an incredible text.

A shame it’s – no. I _must_ keep this in order. 

Katy insisted that all of them should accompany me. She seemed unmoved by my argument that this might simply lead to all of us dying unpleasantly and uselessly. She was extremely emotional about the prospect of being left behind, and I still don’t understand why. I yielded – it isn’t for me to dictate what my allies choose to do, and after all, it seemed possible it was one of the purposes for which I dreamed the recurring – and I was trying to sort through the logistics. So many spells of nondetection and tongues would leave me with very few resources for self-defence, assuming there would be any point in it.

I asked Harper, that morning, if he believed whatever it was that protected his thoughts from me would serve him as well against others. He says he has no reason to believe otherwise. I still wonder about that, but it truly isn’t that important any more. The storm that calls our names is building, and the winds reach for us. There isn’t much time left before it’s unleashed. I have made too many mistakes, failed too badly. Let it come and tear me to tatters.

Keep _order_ , Khem, you mewling disgrace. Clutch your red rags about you and pretend you’re worthy of them. Just a little longer.

Harper pointed out that I could just teleport away without them. It hadn’t occurred to me to simply go. I have no excuses for something that seems so obvious in retrospect. They were less than a day from Skullport, with their guide and supplies – it achieved almost exactly the same as my initial desire to teleport them to Waterdeep before facing Zurn by myself. It defied the expressed wishes of both Katy and Shay to be involved in the matter… but I judged that acceptable.

Misjudged.

Maybe.

I no longer know.

I told Harper to take care of them for me. My wastet-le, in their different ways and degrees, and my ahk-veleth ( _A Thayan term, describing someone in an alliance of equals: a partner of complementary skills and shared goals, with whom one is not in direct competition. Neither ahk-veleth has authority over the other or attempts to establish dominance; mutual protection is owed and mutual help expected, with both partners keeping the balance of power even between them. While theoretically a counterpart to both ‘kvaleth’ and ‘wastet-le’, it is not commonly used among Red Wizards – especially as it is employed here, with no sarcasm involved)._ I remember, when I was a child, dreaming of the recurring and being certain that I would find them one day, and we would be friends, and everything would be all right. Even as a child, I should have known better. Nothing is that easy, even if it might have been.

Then I went.

I chose the simpler lie Harper had suggested, but whether due to content or delivery, Metoth Zurn did not seem convinced. It didn’t matter. He was destroyed by a beam of radiant energy, apparently delivered by a Red Wizard who’d been waiting in the shadows. Naturally, I paid my respects, and I handed over the tome at his request. I was even entertaining the speculation he might have been the person for whom the book was eventually intended – when he let his disguise drop.

_A detailed description of an older male drow in robes, as well as a sketch, follow._

I am gravely concerned about the involvement of the drow in Red Wizard affairs.  I keep turning the whole event over in my mind, questioning whether there was anything I could safely have done to hold or track him. But it is a moot point. I did nothing. I ensured that Zurn was dead and I left the body for the wizards of the enclave to discover. I wanted to speak to his second, but she wasn’t available. As I have left the matter, it could be assumed I killed Zurn myself, which may be of use to myself or to his second. I’d rather work with her than against her; I don’t intend to remain in Skullport indefinitely, and I certainly don’t have the requisite knowledge of the wizards of the enclave to attempt to step into Zurn’s place.

What a pathetic joke.

I returned to the rendezvous inn to wait for the others. It has been burned to the ground; our initial inquiries suggest that a drow with a scar across his nose was responsible, possibly to flush out his quarry. Harper seems to believe he was looking for our guide. I am less certain, and I have no faith in the utility of the description.

Harper and Katy arrived in due time. Shay was not with them. I was… concerned, and displeased, that Harper should have lost her after I entrusted her to his care, but they explained that she had been with them on their return to Skullport, apparently disappearing after that. Katy began to emote hysterically as we went to a secondary location.

I trusted that Shay knew what she was doing, but I nevertheless had an unpleasant flash of insight  - I might almost say empathy – into what it might have been like for her this morning, when she woke and found that the one she was supposed to protect was not where she expected them to be, and was, in fact, out of her reach. It was… an uneasy thing.

Twitch was waiting for us at the secondary location – the house of the slaver Lambent, now deceased – and has apparently adopted us. He’s a magnificent beast, and, like most creatures, considerably easier company than people. He’s sitting beside me as I write, one tentacle curled about my boot, chewing on a weasel skull. It’s… comforting.

_Focus_. Are you a wizard, or are you a flitter-brained lump of quivering emotional jelly? _Control yourself._

Harper went out to look for Shay – ostensibly to soothe Katy, but I believe he was genuinely concerned as well. I myself was starting to grow uncomfortable, and I elected to wait for them outside on the steps. It occurs to me, now, that I never doubted that Harper would find her and bring her back. I don’t understand. I wish I did.

In any case, he did. Shay and I spoke at length.

How could I have missed something so obvious? How could I have been such a careless, worthless excuse for a kvaleth? I _know_ her – I know the monks who shaped her and how they did it. I know how she thinks, the people she has lost and how. I know the fears, the deaths, the tortures that plague her sleeping mind. I know her better than I’ve known anyone since Nebastis – and still I failed her. She specifically asked me to take her with me, and I should have known why. I should have known what leaving her behind, under those circumstances, would do to her. All because, in my arrogance and blindness, I overlooked one thing. I never even considered the possibility that she might have come to care for me.

I still don’t understand why, or how. I know what I am, and what I am not. I am a Red Wizard. I am not nice, or likeable, or trustworthy. I should not matter, on a personal level, to anyone.

But we have been travelling together for so long. She matters to me, I value her – beyond her skills or whatever role the Thirsty may have to play in what will be. I trust her. I told her all of this, and I meant it, and I let her see that. They would not have treated her so at the monastery, and it never occurred to me to take it into account.

There are no excuses. I have apologised, and I have promised to do better. It’s probably too late. The damage is done and I do not have the skills to mend it. I deserve to lose her to Harper. He would not have made the same mistake.

I must do better with him, as well. And find the knowledge to teach Katy, as I have promised.

-

I dreamed I was fire – a joyful, wild hunger. All things were mine to taste, all things were mine to burn and change forever. I sang as I burned, restless and seeking. I came upon the Silent, alone and still. He watched me, and he held out his hand. I laughed in smoke, and I laid my hand in his, unafraid as his fingers closed about mine. He did not burn. Instead I shivered into ash and blew away on the wind.

I have been dreaming the Silent all my life, and he has never spoken – hence the epithet. Last night, he did. I would assign it the highest significance… except that what he said, as he watched the wind whirl me away and scatter me, was: “Khem, what the _fuck_?”

I don’t know what else I expected.

-

Shay, Harper and Katy intend to go out and pursue some small project of Harper’s at the brothel. They expressed no particular desire for me to accompany them, and so I have remained here. Perhaps it may help to have some time to organise my thoughts, to settle myself. Stranger things have happened.

I spoke with Harper earlier. I had wanted to set matters straight between us ever since he said that he believed I hated him.

Of course, I failed miserably. I made a fool of myself because I could not even begin to explain what ahk-veleth are. I irritated him more than usual. I tried to gloss over the whole matter of the recurring by telling him it need not concern him – which I knew was idiotic the moment it fell out of my mouth. I don’t know what’s happening to me.

He said “Well, what would you like me to do? Would you like me to cut off my own fucking hands so that you can – what? What would that even do?” I don’t know why he evoked that image, whether it’s deliberate or linked or significant, but I could _see_ it when he said it – the curled fingers, the stumps, the blood hot on my hands.

He wants me to trust him – he’s _frustrated_ that I do not. He implied that he might, in turn, extend his trust to me. I could almost laugh. Surely he knows better. “Don’t trust me, then. It’s not like I can hold you down and take it from you. It’s not a real – it’s not a thing. Uh. But we should at least try to be friends.” I have been nothing but honest with him, too. He should know what I am by now. Surely I am not what anyone would seek friendship with. 

I don’t know what to do, beyond attempting to correct the most egregious of my recent mistakes when dealing with him. I left a letter for him, apologising for the ‘need not concern you’ comment and offering to try to explain the matter. I don’t even know whether I’d prefer he pursues it or not.

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know I don’t _(this phrase is repeated in increasingly more erratic writing for the rest of the page)_


	6. Codex #6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khem casts Sending and Scrying on Jarnath, and learns enough to make us think his life was in danger. The party went back to Skullport to save him, purely in the interest of getting paid - obviously.   
> Khem begins to suspect Katy’s interest in Shay is something more than friendly and tells Harper a number of important things, including that she’s dreamed of the other party members all her life

… the darkness roils, lightning forking within it and splitting it into pieces. They ring around me, amorphous save for the reaching tendrils. Lightning flashes through them again, slow-arcing light congealing into masks and ribbons. One shape holds out a rose to the Silent. My tongue is silver and heavy in my mouth; I cannot warn him. He takes it, and the darkness surges forward and swallows him. The darkness spirals closer. A shape holds out a pebble to the Erratic. My hands are golden and heavy at the ends of my wrists; I cannot stop her. She takes it, and the darkness wraps itself around her. She’s gone. One shape holds out a potion to the Thirsty. My eyes are stone and heavy in their sockets; I cannot see whether she takes it. I hear laughter in the thunder, the darkness curling icy around me. The book is taken from my hands – 

I recognise the tome, the pebble and the potion, of course, and the silver masks. The conjunction of rose, darkness, and the Silent is familiar, but I can’t remember the details, which suggests a long-ago and infrequent dream. All in all, this dream was far clearer than most I’ve had recently, which is a pleasant change… but I hardly needed divination to tell me we’re deeply embroiled in drow affairs and that I feel powerless.

I hadn’t expected to make use of the spells I learned during my last visit to the Arcane Library so soon, or to quite so dramatic an end. I have always doubted that Jarnath would render any further payment for the death of his target, given that, in smaller matters, he has twice promised what he could not deliver. I do consider myself somewhat in his debt for guiding us to Philock, but such qualms could be easily ignored. In any case, Sending to him requesting assurance that he could pay gained only the answer ‘not now’. I attempted to _scry_ him (classically the signature spell of the experienced diviner; casting it gave me a satisfying sensation of legitimacy), using the blood from the ship as a focus. _Not_ Jarnath’s blood, as it proved; Dwynnej’s text described the effect of casting with a mismatch between target and focus very accurately. Fortunately both subjects were in close proximity. It appeared that our erstwhile guide was being hunted by the drow whose blood had been shed. I’ve rarely seen fear carved so plainly into a face.

I believe the entire race is insane. Even their half-breed children inherit the madness.

I am getting ahead of myself.

It was decided that we would return to Skullport as quickly as possible – which meant from the Arcane Library, via their teleportation services, to the Enclave circle. I expected to be delayed there, and indeed we were; the new mistress of the Enclave, one Eshmira Abbar, summoned us to her office. (Aside: possibly a conjuration specialist, given her affinity for teleportation and the efreet that initially greeted us.)

My mind has been fossilising ever since I left home; a few more months out here and there will be nothing left rattling between my ears but a small coprolite. When I explained the circumstances of Metoth Zurn’s death, Eshmira Abbar asked if I were completely certain of what I’d seen. I missed the screamingly obvious cue – she was much less interested in the involvement of the drow than in my discretion regarding the exact circumstances of her promotion. I was able to reassure her on that point, once I understood her concern. A reputation for inconvenient hallucinations is much easier to work with than what the Academy thought of me after Khaizri…

And she promoted me to nishkir ( _Both a Red Wizard rank and a job description. The exact duties of the nishkir are difficult to define, although both ‘monster-hunters’ and ‘elite field operatives’ have been suggested. It can be said with certainty that it is a position of some authority, and considerable danger. Nishkiri usually work outside Thay and with little support, with the curious corollary that they are perhaps the least likely of all Red Wizards to die at the hands of their fellows. If one encounters a Red Wizard in an abandoned ruin, or halfway up a mountain, or deep underwater, or in any such hostile environment, one can probably greet them as nishkir without great risk of error_ ). I understand her move, of course. I am not yet so stupid. It is both a bribe and a leash. If I should behave, if I should survive, she has gained a useful asset. If she believes my knowledge of Zurn’s demise renders me a liability, it would be the simplest matter in the world to assign me elsewhere, or to a task I have no chance of completing – even simpler than disposing of me herself. Nobody would be surprised at the death of an ill-trained and unready nishkir.

And that is exactly what I am. I was released from my apprenticeship barely a week before I left Thay, and only because Mistress Kharzura was as intrigued as I by my dreams of Skullport. Under other conditions, I would have remained by her side for several years more, gathering knowledge and strength, until we were both ready. I am – I was – a somewhat slow-witted and quiet alakir ( _A novice, more or less: a Red Wizard who has completed her training but not yet achieved any particular rank_ ). Nothing less like the intensive and comprehensive training of a proper nishkir could be imagined.

And I am a diviner, to boot! Field work really is better left to the evokers and the conjurers – I did not even contribute greatly to the death of my predecessor! I was drained by rendering us all nondetectable, and everyone else proved more useful in that battle. It was Harper’s arrow which split the nishkir’s skull (how many times have I dreamt that arrow? I can almost feel it now). Me, a nishkir? It’s one of the poorest jests I’ve ever heard.

But it’s been made, and the only thing to do is prepare to survive the punchline.

After leaving the Enclave, we ran into Aunrae, a half-drow friend of Harper’s – at least, that is what he said she was. I admit I have no idea of his network or contacts, but I’ve never seen her before, and much of the encounter that followed remains inexplicable – or, at any rate, unexplained. She was demanding entrance to the house of the illithid Grotana (who still apparently believes that Katy is a pirate sorceress queen and the rest of us are her slaves, despite the _many_ details obviously wrong with this).

Using Katy’s invitation as a pretext, then, we got Aunrae into the illithid’s home, whereupon she started demanding the location of a third party. The illithid was almost grovelling in fear – not quite the fearsome devourer of brains most texts depict – when the drow who had warned us away from Jarnath appeared.

A most confusing scene ensued. Harper was there to assist Aunrae. The drow, Valas Daevin, is her father, which was why she intended to kill him. I’ve rarely heard such purpose or such hatred in a mind. The half-drow slave of the illithid’s – also sired by Valas – interposed himself. Harper argued Aunrae out of killing Valas, further demonstrating exactly how dangerous he becomes the moment he opens his mouth.

He was there ostensibly to help her achieve her goals, as he says he is for me. However, in the crucial instant, he prevented her from killing her quarry - no. That’s inaccurate. He prevented her from _attempting_ it. I am not certain of the relative power levels involved – I’ve seen the Gladiator in action, but both Valas and Aunrae are complete unknowns – but it is quite possible that, even if Harper, Shay, Katy and I had assisted Aunrae, she would still have failed and we would be dead. It is also possible that Valas would have been slain. Perhaps Harper had relevant information. If so, he did not share it.

The way he persuaded her also requires thought. There appeared to be something about the situation that resonated with him – “you’re not the only one with an asshole father”, and the implication that family was a limited commodity. Linked, perhaps, with whatever the full version of his ‘family business’ might be. Well. I hope that one day, I find the right questions or magic to learn more of that matter.

Valas Daevin gave us a location where he believed we might find Jarnath. As it turned out, he was entirely correct. It also appears that when I had Scried Jarnath, we witnessed not a lethal hunt, but drow foreplay.

Lovely.

We briefly made the acquaintance of the paramour in question – one Rylfein by name – before another drow came crashing through the window to demand the location of some money. Both appeared to match the description of the drow who burned down the Pick and Lantern, which demonstrates exactly how well-spent all our effort on the subject was. The latter also had a small companion clinging to his back – quite one of the oddest creatures I’ve ever seen. We mostly left the matter there, and were ambushed on our way back to the house by hirelings of the Mandible.

Despite their spell-caster summoning a Fomorian (an unusual feat, and certainly not a conventional choice; giants are not easily bound, as I understand it, and neither as biddable or as predictable as undead or fiends), our assailants were quickly subdued. The spell-caster is down in the cellar at present. Harper’s bindings appear secure – even disturbingly so. He would not have made the same errors Khaseth did.  

-

An old dream returned again last night – the Erratic and the Silent. The thing which accompanies the Erratic was once again shaped like a toad of stone, with burning eyes. Her chest was a wet, scarlet ruin. The Silent seized the thing and tried to tear it free, but he didn’t see how it had wrapped its claws around her heart. She screamed for mercy, but the Silent was inexorable, and slowly he got the thing away from her. It laughed wildly as he threw it away, kissing her heart and lavishing endearments upon it, while the Silent knelt beside the dying Erratic, blood dripping from the hole in his chest to the hole in hers.

I would gladly sacrifice clear warnings for cryptic guidance. It is maddening, to be so lost, to dream nothing that I do not already know with a waking mind… to feel the storm coming and have no idea how to weather it.

Enough.

Harper and I interrogated the spell-caster separately. I am uncertain exactly what methods Harper might have used, but she apparently told Harper that her ambush had been the Mandible’s audition process. False, according to my _detect thoughts_ ; she had been hired by the Mandible to kill us. She was quite indignant about the whole process, which was not without its amusement value. She was also poorly educated; she had a description of me, and still failed recognise a Red Wizard of Thay.

…I am rambling, committing all kinds of useless minutiae to this journal, which was _originally_ intended to record only what was important – another symptom of how sloppy and stupid I am becoming. It may very well be that I eventually fall into so many poor habits that I would not survive returning home… but that seems a distant concern at present. Survive the scorpion in your mouth before worrying about the serpent at your boot, as Master Xobek used to say in Combat Applications…

Szass Tam’s balls, I hope Mistress Kharzura has killed him by the time I return…

Rambling. Again. What is wrong with me?

In the marketplace, we encountered the individuals who crashed through Jarnath’s window. The drow male – one Adinaun by name – has a proposition to discuss with us. The female – Twinkle – is patently not human, judging by her slitted pupils and tail. She may be fiendish in heritage, given how she could apparently see ‘Bob’ when Katy had not summoned him into visibility.

 We met with Tansia Neverember – given her name, a member of the same House as the current Open Lord of Waterdeep, or at least posing as one – of the Mandible. She shrugged off the attack upon us as a trifling matter. As Harper had expressed an interest in working with or for the Mandible, she also gave us a missive to deliver to one Malakuth Tabuirr at the temple of Vhaeraun.

I checked it for magic, at Harper’s request, and found none, but I did not have _clairvoyance_ prepared to actually ascertain its contents. I will tomorrow.

We found Adinaun and Twinkle at the High Tide. On closer observation, their manner is very much that of master and slave – a very possessive master, for he’d performed something like a fatal peotomy on an overly familiar halfling. I don’t have enough for a full threat assessment of either of them as yet, but in brief: he appears to be extremely dangerous, armed with a ridiculous amount of weapons and with sufficient scars to denote an experienced survivalist. She appears to have unusual modes of perception, an ingenuous manner, and is enough of a spell-caster to purify their food and drink. Given her demonstrated proficiency with the lyre, I shall tentatively class her as a bard.

Adinaun claims to have worked with Jarnath on a heist. Unsurprisingly, Jarnath orchestrated events that placed him in possession of the entire amount of gold and saw him leave Adinaun for dead. Obviously, Adinaun is now seeking both revenge and the treasure. If we discover its hiding place, he offers fifty percent of the remaining gold. It’s a prospect not without its attraction, not least because Jarnath is an irritant, and – at least here, I will confess it – because Adinaun seems relatively straightforward and pleasant to deal with. Nonetheless, I believe we will need to discuss this matter further.

Shay and Harper released our captive spell-caster that evening, while Katy and I sat down for our first lesson. Eventually. I must have misspoken to some degree when I first explained the exercise, for we were at cross-purposes for some time. Even once I made myself clear and we sat down, it took some time before we got anywhere at all. She remains easily distracted and lacking in discipline, and the fact that Harper joined in did not help (aside: why did he? Simply to guard his wastet-le and be certain of what I was teaching? Or did he expect to make some use of it himself? Simply because it amused him?). Still, we made some progress.

If we continue at this rate, she _may_ be able to safely cast a cantrip about the time my eyebrows turn entirely white.

Later, Katy came up to my room to ask some questions. I think it’s safe to assume her intention was as transparent as it seemed – she wished to ascertain the ties that bind Shay to her order and how they could be broken. As I told her, I have already offered to turn my attention to this matter should Shay wish it, but she has never stated her desire to leave. She is my wastet-le, not my slave; these choices are for her to make.  Katy made the point – a surprisingly insightful one – that Shay has been trained to accept and obey, not to question or to hold preferences. It may no longer be possible for her to _want_ to leave.

I will have to think more on this, although I maintain that a) I will not force Shay to any such action against her will, and b) I will not aid Katy to storm the Long Death Monastery. It is patently suicidal, and I will not be the Red Wizard who breaks our treaty with the monks.

Katy’s motivation in this matter is less clear. It’s long been clear that she is emotionally driven (as is Harper, although it manifests differently), that she attaches primary importance to how she feels about people. It’s entirely reasonable that she should be attached to Shay – I am, and I am _not_ controlled by emotions – and should wish to remove her from a situation that is both painful and not of her choosing. Nevertheless, she was quite insistent on the point. There is a significant difference between ‘Why don’t you just leave the Red Wizards, Khem?’ and ‘How can we get Shay free?’, which may or not be entirely attributable to Shay’s more personable demeanour… but I am speculating without sufficient evidence.

… I dreamed the Thirsty, carved from clouded blue ice. She bent her head to mine, frost to skin, and her thoughts flowed with the bitter cold that radiated from her. I saw her in the arena, small and fragile, a spider-webbing of cracks over her surface. She screamed defiance, both within her thoughts and in the voice of wind from the mountains. Deep under her ice, she began to fill with black smoke, boiling out from the cracks between her fingers, pouring from her eyes and her mouth. The ice could not hold it, and she burst apart. I bled from a thousand cuts, and she was gone – leaving only black smoke and ice, flesh and blood.

This, again. As if I didn’t already _know._

Yesterday was an… interesting day. Productive, I hope, but it is so difficult to tell.

Shay was practising her alchemy. I gave her the recipe for hair and iris dye I found in the Arcane Library, and briefly apprised her of the questions Katy had asked. She seemed mildly surprised that Katy had brought it to me instead of her – which is fair, it’s never pleasant to be the subject of furtive discussion (which is, of course, why I informed her) – but she confirmed that Katy has brought this up with her as well. It is another reason I need to watch my student very carefully.

I cast _clairvoyance_ for Harper to ascertain the contents of the letter we were to deliver to Malakuth Tabuirr. It read only ‘I know’. Not as informative as I could have hoped, but suggestive. On one hand, we have Tansia, who intimated her role as leader of the Mandible was to prevent severe upsets of the balance of power in Skullport. On the other, we have a known associate – probably worshipper, certainly patron – of the temple of Vhaeraun, as well as a quantity of Vhaeraunite drow crawling out of the mushrooms, who could support whatever ploy he might have in mind. Certainly at least one drow is plotting a move that will have repercussions for the powerscape of Waterdeep, to which Skullport is linked. At the moment, there is nothing to suggest that Jarnath has support among the other followers of his god, but it’s not impossible.

There are so many unknown quantities as to make me long for home, where I knew all my peers and how they thought, and the resources at their command, and their potential allies and enemies. Still, my initial training must be _some_ help here, and it is… reassuring to have a better idea of our positioning. We are deeply entangled with others’ schemes, of course, but these players have always been on the field, their plans and the currents of their powers already in motion. Now that we are aware of them, we have a much better chance of negotiating them successfully.

We delivered the letter as instructed. I saw the drow who killed Metoth Zurn speaking with the priest there – after sufficient bribery, the priest stated his name was Ahmryr Yhauntyr (I am uncertain of the correct Common spelling), a courier and caravanner. Not particularly informative, but I wasn’t expecting to see him again at all. Nor did I wish to appear too curious; I have no desire to be destroyed as Zurn was. More of this shortly.

The priest to whom we gave the letter did not share his name – I consider it quite likely that he was Tabuirr himself, but I have no real evidence – and was pleased to share information about his deity to potential converts. So, despite being primarily a drow god, it seems Vhaeraun has no particular dislike for the worship of other races (but is that about preference, or only about power?). He would appear to have some agenda beyond the acquisition of wealth and patronage of thieves (freedom? From Lloth? They would appear to exist in opposition, if Jarnath’s hatred of spiders is indicative). He has been silent in the past, but has recently begun to speak to his priests again. I wonder about the time involved - whether Jarnath is a recent convert or lasted through the interregnum… if he deserted while the god was silent, and Valas did not, it might possibly explain the latter’s description of the former’s faith as ‘impure’…

Adinaun and Twinkle were also at the temple. That makes three Vhaearaunite drow in our immediate acquaintance – and one of whatever she might be.

When it appeared we would not gain anything further, we left the temple. Shay and Katy returned to the house, while Harper and I continued on to the Mandible. Tansia appeared reasonably content with the letter’s delivery, if somewhat less so with Harper’s insinuation that the death of the Tyrran high priestess might be a boon to the Mandible’s interests as well, and therefore Tansia should pay him for the assassination. Not so different to my desire to speak with Eshmira Abbar or Anishta Daraam about the matter, save that I am already a Red Wizard, and he is (as far as I know) still proving himself to the Mandible. In any case, she agreed – provided the matter was discreetly handled, and that she was given the priestess’s holy symbol as proof of death.

I suspect Harper has taken this approach because he believes, as I do, that trying to collect payment from Jarnath is unlikely to go smoothly. It’s a shrewd play, assuming Katy’s scruples on the proposed activity can be overcome. If they cannot, I doubt Harper will proceed at all. Where that might leave me – and Shay, for that matter – is another question entirely.

Well. I cast _tongues_ on Harper, so he could understand the conversation at the Enclave – for the first time in his three visits there – and I made Mistress Eshmira aware that I had seen the drow who slew her predecessor at the temple of Vhaeraun, and of the meagre details I had gained. It’s hers to pursue, if she is interested in the involvement of the drow in Red Wizard affairs. If, on the other hand, she hired him herself… well, I might have been less than tactful, but I believe I made my position clear enough. I don’t intend to investigate this further myself, and I hardly care if she did have outside help; I don’t aspire to the Skullport Enclave.

She declined to discuss any Waterdhavian matters; it seems I must seek out Anishta Daraam.

After leaving the Enclave, Harper and I had the usual wrangle. He doesn’t understand why I would remain with my order ‘to be shat upon’; I didn’t understand why he would use that term to describe what had been a perfectly courteous conversation. I admit that the Red Wizard’s path is demanding, and my superiors rarely have my best interests at heart – but that’s as it has to be. The disagreement expanded onto other, only semi-related topics: why he insists on offering me his arm, and why I dislike touching others and resist being touched… which culminated in him insisting on walking three steps behind me the entire way back to the house.

I _hated_ it, of course. There are few things more uncomfortable than someone at your back, where you can’t see them or what they’re doing – and every time I try to stress his position, or to pay him due respect as ahk-veleth, he does something like this… I was sorely tempted to _polymorph_ myself into some winged creature and leave him behind entirely. But Skullport isn’t really safe, and if these unpleasant little games truly amuse him so much, I can let him mock me.

I have had considerable practice in the matter, after all, and he isn’t as vicious as most.

Shay had made a Thayan dessert when we returned. It’s almost disconcerting, how something so little can summon up all that I miss most of home. It’s a weakness, I suppose, to be longing so deeply for a place and time, instead of focusing on what I must do here, but the memories keep returning. The library, warm and cosy on a winter’s day, with the grey rain falling into the lake. The aromatic soups in the refectories, the chatter of my peers, the fierce pleasure of competition… Certainty. Sense. Knowing where I belonged, and seeing a clear path before me.

We discussed our options and choices for a time without reaching a conclusion, partially because we were distracted by the matter of Bob. I believe Katy sees, now, some of the ways in which it seeks to manipulate her, and that it has not always been honest with her. She was quite alarmed when she understood that it was always with her, listening, whether or not she has summoned or can see it, and she retired to bed so that we could discuss more freely. I appreciate the sentiment, although I doubt the creature’s so closely tethered to her that it cannot eavesdrop on a conversation happening downstairs. On the other hand, I’m not sure just how interested it is in anything beyond Katy. If I could identify it properly, perhaps I could get a better idea. Next time I’m in Waterdeep, perhaps…

After she left, I made Harper aware of the possibility that Katy had made a warlock pact with Bob, or whatever entity Bob answers to, and what that might entail. He seemed concerned, if somewhat overloaded with information. He also threatened me: he will not tolerate any attempt on my part to harm Katy, whatever might be asked of her by her putative patron. I was rather taken off-guard. She is not only one of the recurring, but my wastet-le, my student, and I take those responsibilities seriously. Even if I did not, I have clearly stated I do not wish to make an enemy of him: anyone with eyes can see how he values her, and I have never meddled with another’s wastet-le in any case.

It was not an auspicious start to the evening, and it got worse. Between that threat and the accusation of discourtesy, and the earlier irritants – including that Harper _had_ received my letter, but didn’t know what to do about it, and apparently he didn’t comprehend that I was _willing_ to answer his question but did not _want_ to, which is not that fine a distinction! – my patience and defences were worn a great deal thinner than I had realised. When he made some remark about me loving him – quite mild fare, really – I lost control. I let him see exactly how much I disliked his innuendo, and I fled. Thankfully, I retained enough self-discipline to attempt to give the impression of an offended retreat, rather than a defeated rout, but I doubt he was fooled.

My peers would have laughed themselves sick at such a display, and then attempted to goad me further, into rash, self-destructive action. Harper… apologised, and promised to attempt to restrain himself (at which he was not entirely successful, but as I told him, I am reasonably convinced he doesn’t mean anything by it, and I _have_ heard worse). I am certain he does not have the full tale – anyone from my Academy would be delighted to share it, of course, but I doubt he can reach so far as Thay, and we haven’t met anyone out here from home – which is some small comfort. What he will do with the information he does have, however, remains to be seen.

Well. After Harper had done with that subject, he poured me a drink, and he asked for the answer my letter had promised him. Mindful both of the way alcohol affects me, and of the fact he has indicated he finds me more agreeable when I’m drinking, I made judicious use of it while I explained to him exactly what an oneiric diviner is, how my dreams guide and alter my life, exactly who the recurring are – in short, exactly why he matters to me. There were several aspects of his reaction that I note here, in no particular order, for further thought/investigation.

\- He never expressed doubt or mockery. The concept was unfamiliar to him – as most aspects of magical theory seem to be – but he has queried other things that I have told him I could do, and this is a more unusual and rarer manifestation of magic.

\- He recognised the dream I related to him. I was not carefully monitoring his reaction while I was describing it – an oversight – but I did retain the impression it shook him profoundly. By that I can conclude, I think, that it relates to some aspect of the past he guards so well. I wonder if the other figures represented forces, abstractions, or people, and whether I dare ask him about it. The Silent has so often appeared with a hole or wound, and he has spoken of unpleasant memories…

\- “It seems like a cruel thing to do to yourself.” Cruel? That’s not a usual reaction at all. Counter-productive, useless or insane, according to the non-oneiric diviners; impossible or insane, according to the ill-educated. But cruel? I assume he’s judging by his own measure – that is, such dreams are something he would not want for himself. Why would he not want additional warnings, knowledge, insight and guidance? I admit I have dreamed death or torment frequently – but it’s not _real_ (unless and until it is) and it’s a small price to pay. Surely he wouldn’t be scared of that? Possibly linked: does he struggle with common nightmares? Is that why he sleeps so poorly? (If so, is it possible that some of the exercises Mistress Kharzura first set me would help him? I believe this may be worth pursuing.)

\- He seemed to understand just how momentous – and staggering – it was to find the recurring in reality. I don’t know what to make of this, except that he has shown flashes of insight on other occasions. I just hadn’t anticipated just how disconcerting it would be to have him understand _me_ that easily, particularly when we seem so often to be completely alien to each other.

\- “How much did you see?” That, at least, was unmistakeable and completely understandable. He reacted almost exactly as I would have, if someone had told me they had witnessed some of my more difficult or painful moments. I tried to offer him some reassurance without speaking falsely – most of my dreams _are_ highly allegorical, and difficult to comprehend without more context than I usually possess. I have seen a great deal… but I don’t necessarily know what it means, or where it fits. However, given that he recognised that dream, it seems logical that it referred to something in the past, and, probably, so do most of the other dreams in which the Silent was the masked ash-rabbit, or where the crowned vulture or the ocean-eyed serpent appeared.

\- He disliked the idea of dreams in which he’d harmed me, saying that he felt at fault. He also asked how much control I had over my dreams, whether I could just stop them, or some of them, and expressed his wish that I did not dream of him that night. Perhaps I failed to make clear the precise ways that the dreams and reality interact – that it isn’t an exact correlation. There are warnings, there are allegories, there are possibilities. The number of dreams that directly portended something that later occurred is relatively small… In any case, why should he feel responsible for what the Silent does in my dreams? One could make an argument that he would prefer I was not experiencing oneiric fore-echoes of the moment when he does strike against me, but that doesn’t ring true. Mistress Kharzura would fault that conclusion – I have no strong evident or reasoning to support it – but I do not have to defend my reasoning at present, and as long as I don’t allow it to pull me off-guard, I may entertain it if I wish. 

\- He asked if we could begin again, and held out his hand for me to take. The angle was exactly the same as when I dreamed it, but if that was truly the moment it presaged, everything else was different. I was _terrified._ Almost anything else would have been easier than giving him my hand - after all my training and so many dreams… but I conquered my fear, and no ill came out of it.

There is more I should write, I believe, but even the small amount of alcohol I consumed has rendered some aspects of the conversation unclear in my recollection. I will record that Harper began to offer me his assistance in reaching my bed – as far as I can tell – but stopped himself before he reached the end of the sentence, and offered to wake Shay instead. Perhaps he will genuinely try to avoid the innuendo. What a relief it would be, to let those memories rest…

Alcohol disordered my dreams, again, blurring ordinary memory and nightmare with divinatory dreaming, so that the Silent was Khaseth, and I was myself and that elven spell-caster. He did as Khaseth did and as he would have, and I did not escape him.

My hand is cramping, and I have been forced to resort to simpler ciphers in order to complete this entry more quickly. I can hear Katy’s voice from downstairs, enthusing over breakfast as usual; it is more than time I descended.

I am… somewhat anxious at the prospect of facing Harper again, having shared so much. I suspect, from elements of last night, that he may be equally ill-at-ease. It’s not a particularly comforting thought – but why should I expect or desire comfort?


	7. Codex #7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khem reflects on their murder of the high priestess of Tyr - who was actually a gold dragon - and Jarnath’s inevitable disappearance when they went to pick up payment. She continues failing to understand her party members, as is customary.

… so _stupid_ – for all the times I suspected that Harper was not entirely human, it never occurred to me to doubt Cyrilis Albinex. I saw the signs: the awe among her adherents, the glowing gems, the mist. I had the dreams: my speculations about the laughing, one-handed woman in golden scale mail seem ridiculous now. It should have been obvious. I’ve never been closer to agreeing with those who sneer at oneiric diviners. 

All this, and I simply failed to realise the woman we’d been hired to kill was a dragon.

A gold dragon, the High Priestess of Tyr, in his temple and her lair: not a foe I would have suspected we could survive, let alone kill. Either my studies on the subject overestimated their strength (possible; not too many academics would seek out such a creature willingly), or my allies and I are rather more capable than I’d assessed (leaving aside the possibility of an unknown and probably non-measurable outside factor). The first conclusion is somewhat difficult to test; I shall have to work with the second.

Well. The dragon’s death summoned an apparition that closely matched the statue of Vhaeraun in his temple. The statue, however, did not exhibit hair that changed colour, nor did it laugh at us, nor set blue fire burning at the doors. I am inclined to believe it a genuine visitation – if only because he acted like the kind of deity Jarnath would worship.

Being embroiled in drow concerns was bad enough, but it seems we are truly pawns in the power-games of the gods. I know Vhaeraun, Tyr and Yurtrus are seated at the board, but who else will shove us around to their liking?

Between that and the Wall, it’s almost enough to make a self-respecting Red Wizard look for a god to stand kvaleth for her.

What nonsense am I writing? Hells, I am more drained than I thought…

… the chains dream again. It’s been quite a while since it last came to me – shortly before Khaseth’s attack, if I recall correctly. The chains embedded in my flesh stretched off in all directions, myriad in their colours and shapes. The unseen hands tugged at them until I danced to their will, although I tried to fight them. The one anchored in my throat tore free this time, and I remember choking on the blood -

But the recurring were with me. They were chained, too. The Thirsty hung quiet in hers, obedient to the faintest twitch of command; the Erratic tore a chain from her arm as I watched, and wrapped the wound with a thicker one; the Silent pulled on a blue-black chain as if he could draw the hand on the other end to him.

I saw, for the first time, the three chains _I_ held, and where they were fastened to the recurring. They were not embedded in my hands, but neither could I let them go…

Katy was unusually ebullient this morning – apparently slaughtering a dragon feeds into some of her novel-based fantasies. It’s a more explicable reaction than other tropes she’s mentioned. Balancing that, however, was Harper, who was in a black mood again. I cannot shake the feeling there was something I should do about it – or for him in general - but experience tells me I will only make it worse. Besides, I wouldn’t appreciate being asked to explain myself, or Katy’s insistence on ‘cheering up’ when I am feeling savage. So I mostly kept out of it, although I continue to observe, to try and understand…

As expected, Jarnath was not there when we went to claim payment. I don’t think any of us were surprised – irritated, yes, but not surprised. Even Katy has better pattern-recognition than that. It did, however, leave us at somewhat of a loss. Harper successfully extorted payment from the Mandible, which appeared to shake the last of his black mood.

Adinaun and Twinkle, who we suspected might have had a hand in Jarnath’s disappearance, were not in evidence at the High Tide…

[several pages follow, of which only fragments have been deciphered as yet. One features the image of a magnificent gold dragon, reared on its hind legs and breathing fire.]

… offered to _buy_ me!… quite obviously disturbed, and went tearing out of the house… Aunrae… Malakuth Tabuirr, a power play, given Tansia Neverember’s note… some drink shaped like a serpent… speaking to Ahmryr Yhauntyr and another drow, possibly Tabuirr… stupid hats, but probably more comfortable than wigs…

… legless on the floor, and Shay kissed her cheek. These matters are handled quite differently outside the Academy, I suspect, but some things are unmistakable. Certainly the instant epistaxis was not subtle – although its significance escaped Shay. She seemed a little confused by the whole incident, and when she said as much, I discreetly told her Katy was infatuated with her.

It’s a rather peculiar development, to my mind. Katy has consistently watched elves – I still remember the way she was hanging off that book-seller’s every word – and I assumed that was what she found attractive. There’s a great physical difference between any given elf and Shay.  What I would consider the usual sort of motives seem unlikely: Katy does not think like a Red Wizard, and even if she did, I can see no particular political or tactical advantage to be gained from dalliance with Shay.

No. I am all but certain it is a genuine, if atypical, attraction.

I don’t know how the Long Death monks handle these matters, either. With no real evidence, I suspect that Shay will not unbend so far as to encourage her admirer. No doubt that’s wise. Shay can certainly handle any physical threat Katy might pose – ha, there speaks the Red Wizard again - but Katy’s control of her magic is noticeably weaker when she is distracted or emotional. I judge there’s a sizeable risk of a wild magic accident during sex.

Still, in another light, it almost seems a pity. There was a look in Katy’s eyes that reminded me of Nebastis. And the sorceress makes so many idiotic decisions that one feels she should encouraged in her first display of good taste. Shay is not, physically, an outstanding example of her brutish race, true, but that is ephemeral: her worth is clear for all with sufficient judgement to discern it. I think better of Katy that she does.

Idle musings. I am kvaleth to them both: this concerns me only if either ask me to intervene. I have meddled too much already – not by answering Shay’s question, that was perfectly within my responsibilities to her – but by prying into her mind onto the subject. She is fond of Katy, and somewhat embarrassed by the situation…

But that wasn’t what I went in to find. Shay _does_ wish to leave the Long Death. Her reservations are because of her friend, whom she wishes to free, and because she does not want to involve or risk Harper, Katy, or myself. These scruples can be overcome, I think – in any case, it makes my path clear. I think the first step is to examine her journal, the means by which she is tracked…

… stumbling blindly through the shelves of the library, knowing by the cries that they were gaining on me. Somewhere, among all the books, was the only one that could help, but I didn’t know which one, couldn’t read the spines, couldn’t remember the layout, and the pages were crumbling into a thick, choking dust. There was no time. The Erratic and the Thirsty called my name – pleading or guiding, I couldn’t tell – and I knew the Silent was there, too, somewhere, no easier to find than the one book I sought. The roof began to fall in, and by thin, greenish starlight, I could see them all: the book, the hunters, the recurring, and I knew I had only life enough to do one thing…

… Katy demanded to know exactly how she had behaved while drinking that ridiculously potent serpent alcohol, and Harper, the ingrate, walked out and left me to conduct the conversation. As if I know anything about mediating love-affairs! Especially when Katy chose to claim her blushing was because she was “allergic to water”! I haven’t heard an excuse like that since Hathreb said his alchemy homework had undergone “a spontaneous evaporative event”.

She tried to downplay the matter and asked me not to say anything to Shay about it. I explained that I could certainly hold my tongue in future, but that I’d already answered Shay’s question: in short, that Shay knew exactly what was going on.

Katy’s response was predictably emotive. I had no business speculating on her attraction, certainly none speaking about it to its presumed object; I must have had some ulterior motive, possibly jealousy, for disrupting the balance between Shay and Katy; I had done “the worst thing in the world”, “possibly ruined [her] life” and, essentially, betrayed our alliance. It seemed strange to me, given that Katy could have assumed Shay was aware of her interest after the whole incident… but I will accept her word on it.

Again, I misjudge and fail my wastet-le.

I could rail about my own ignorance, claim that I was doing the best I could under conditions I was never trained for. I could make excuses about how even those more familiar with her believe that Katy overreacts. They might even be true, but they don’t change the outcome. I have a responsibility to her, and by her estimation, I abrogated it.  

There was little I could do, except offer an apology and explain something of why I had acted as I had: that my sole experience of that nature, Nebastis had told me of her feelings and it had helped me decide how to proceed.

It was… slightly uncomfortable to speak of her, even after all this time; it was somewhat worse when Katy seized on it like Twitch on a weasel. I did not attempt to disguise the fact that I killed her, although I suppose I never said so directly; in any case, Katy appeared to think it the equivalent of one of those books she’s always going on about. There were even tears in her eyes.

Well, she promised to keep my secret, immediately assuming that it was one, and said that she just wants me to be happy, and then asked Harper (who was listening outside the door, naturally) to fetch her more bacon. That sort of emotional volatility does look as though it requires a great deal of fuel. Perhaps that’s why she hasn’t noticeably gained weight despite the massive mound of pancakes she consumes daily.

Katy was reluctant to speak to Shay about the whole matter, but Harper was most insistent. He also agreed with me when I pointed out that not doing so showed a lack of faith in Shay. I suspect his agreement springs from some perspective other than my own inclination to have all the relevant facts made clear to all relevant parties – and my belief that Shay will handle what concerns her well – but it was still a pleasant indication that perhaps I have not been hopelessly stupid with Katy. Then he bullied her into speaking to Shay. I do admire the way he handles people.

Katy returned in short order, expressing her wish to speak to Grotana and Twinkle about her fiend, having also made it clear she would prefer to do so without Shay or me in attendance. It was understandable, if somewhat undesirable. I did offer to find some makework for myself, which Katy took as some sort of passive-aggressive jibe. How am I to be a decent ally to these people when I cannot make myself clear?

[Almost immediately after complaining about the difficulty of clear communication, the writer becomes more intricate in her encryption]

…described Jarnath talking to him… Rylfein keeping discreet watch… about the time we killed the dragon… can sympathise with its admiration of the more fabulous creatures in the bestiary, particularly those thought lost, but still, Squishy?… priests to contact… magical interference of a kind I did not recognise…

… Shay appeared to have some vision of Yurtrus. She said there was no hurry to go to that temple instead, which I accepted and Harper overrode. Shay drank a bowl of disgusting gloop in the temple, then fainted. When she regained consciousness, she explained that Yurtrus had ordered her to Sundabar, in the Silver Marches. Katy and Harper had a number of questions and objections, as well they might; I ascertained whether she was going and assured her I would accompany her.

That much, at least, is clear and achievable.

The priest currently on duty at the Temple of Vhaeraun quickly identified the bond between Katy and her fiend as a potential danger, and recommended an exorcism ritual. This, he said, would take three days of preparation and a fee in gold. He also mentioned that he has conducted it only once in four hundred years, and on that occasion, it was successful. He was somewhat evasive about how its subject fared – it sounded as though he was rather more interested in the capture or study of the parasitic extra-planar in question – and Katy believes both that the subject died and that she will also.

She may be correct, but I don’t see this as a major issue; she would be in a temple whose clerics are more than happy to render service for gold, and the diamond she gave me awhile ago is of suitable size to fuel a _resurrection_ spell. It would certainly be a fitting use for it.

Nevertheless, she was distressed. She dragged Harper outside, while I spoke further to the priest. Based on his knowledge and what I could provide him, he tentatively identified Bob as an incubus disguised as a minor demon. This would explain a great deal about its behaviour, and about the ineffectual nature of my researches into the subject. The priest has been bribed to continue his study into the matter and is preparing for the ritual; Katy may take some persuasion, I think, but that I leave in Harper’s hands.

I had a discussion with Harper after we returned to the house – in Mulhorandi, after casting _tongues_ on him. I thought it a worthwhile precaution against Bob’s eavesdropping, as was the walk we took around the rather squalid Skullport block. I informed him of what I’d learned from the priest and the implications for Katy. It took some time, of course (how can people be so ignorant? Is that really the trade-off: you gain people skills and lose a basic understanding of the world we live in and any control of your emotions?), but again, we are in agreement as to the necessity of getting rid of Bob.

He also asked after Shay and made clear his intent to accompany her about her business in Sundabar. In turn, I asked why. It was not as disingenuous a question as he seemed to believe. I am aware he feels a responsibility for Shay, as well as some form of emotional connection… but he is a sufficiently rational creature that those are not necessarily reason enough for a long journey into the unknown on the say-so of some pestilential and plague-ridden deity.

He said that I have demonstrated emotional awareness beyond the limited understanding I profess, and that pretending to less empathy than I possess is unwise. He accused me of being frightened by emotions.

I suppose it’s encouraging to hear – as though I have come further in understanding my allies, and offering what they need, than I believed. It doesn’t feel that way, though. Sometimes things make sense, or I can extrapolate from my own experiences… but it still feels wrong. Years of training taught me to look for the rational motive, for what there is to gain, and so often it’s absent here, or… there’s a satisfaction in learning, in the exercise of logic, in facts gathered and arrayed into a coherent whole. I think they do something similar with emotion – as though emotion is its own reward. It sounds ridiculous. You might as well eat when you aren’t hungry, sleep when you aren’t tired, or… I don’t know. Kill when it’s not necessary.

Ha.

I suppose what it boils down to is that I know I understand Red Wizards. I also know these people are not my kind. Sometimes they’re similar; usually they’re very different. When they’re similar, I can contribute. But I’ve made some mistakes, both with members of the order and with outsiders, and some have carried grave consequences.

Harper asked about Nebastis.

I should have seen that coming. I knew he was listening, and that it would be the sort of detail to interest him – if not in quite the same way as it intrigued Katy.  Of course, he didn’t miss that I had killed her; he just wanted to confirm it.

I do wonder what he made of it. It probably looks very callous to an outsider – which, of course, it was. He probably wouldn’t see the reasoning behind it, even if I did explain it. Unsurprising, given how often I’ve questioned the necessity myself… He also offered an apology, concerned that asking about her was overstepping. It wasn’t, although I’m not sure I conveyed that adequately. In any case, it suggests that the subject of past lovers and/or murders is one he considers out-of-bounds for our alliance. That, in turn, implies that I am unlikely to learn more from him about the person represented by the ocean-eyed serpent – since the animals in that dream were people, by Harper’s report, and given the context of other dreams, that one is almost certainly not the seas or the Navy, as I’d surmised, but a lost lover.

Endless digressions. Harper called me ‘the brains of this outfit’, with no detectable sarcasm, but I can’t imagine it’s a post I can claim to hold much longer. I can see myself losing discipline, concentration, the ability to think in connected sequence… I don’t know what’s happening to me.

Since we were speaking in Mulhorandi anyway, I took the opportunity to answer properly a question he asked a long time ago: what I meant when I referred to him as an ally. I called him ahk-veleth.  

I’ve never said that word before. It was somewhat easier than I’d expected – possibly because I’ve acknowledged it for some time, and because it would be painfully obvious to any Red Wizard who watched how I usually interact with him.

Which has its own dangers, of course, ridicule being the mildest of them…

He didn’t really react, but I hope it was of use. At any rate, I’m glad to have one more snarl straightened and clarified.

After bidding him goodnight, I went in. Shay was in her customary place in front of the fire, and I scried the priest of Yurtrus at her request. He appeared to be travelling through the Underdark with other orcs, which was none too informative. I offered to cast Sending for her, but apparently all she wanted was to be sure he was well.

I also tried to scry Adinaun. What is about the drow that sends that spell awry? Is it Vhaeraun? The ambient magic of the Underdark? I could understand if the spell had simply failed – that’s a basic _Nondetection_ \- but the way it warped between Rylfein and Jarnath when I tried to scry Jarnath, and this time, well… if I had time and a handful of apprentices, I’d enjoy studying and classifying the effects. As it is, it makes my head hurt. I searched for Adinaun. I got what looked like a Skullport street and what seemed to be a first-person perspective of a drow that resembled Rylfein. Possibly I’ve been cursed by some entity whose sense of humour outweighs its malevolence, and it defaults to images of Rylfein whenever I attempt to scry on a drow. It would make as much sense as other recent events…

… I dreamed of a vast underground lake. A white, luminous fog rose from its surface, pulsing in time to a strange, wild music. I think I would know the tune if I heard it again, but the instruments or the singers were unfamiliar. There was a deathly peace about it: there was no breath to stir the mist, there had never been, there could never be. I knew I had been called there, and that I could not leave. There was something beneath the water that knew my name…


	8. Codex #8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khem has a minor breakdown over her party members' issues.

[a brief snippet garnered from the pages, encrypted as a moth’s wing crumbling under a touch]

… the threads are fraying. It’s all turning to ashes in my hands and I cannot stop it, I cannot hold them safe. It should be more secure than this. We _are_ strong: we defeated a _dracolich_ (Harper was there when its breath rendered me unconscious. Again). Katy has been rid of her fiend without issue, even if she did warn it beforehand. At least, she has if the priest’s binding spell holds it securely in its phylactery, and if it is safe in Harper’s keeping.

And yet.

The cracks are spreading. The ground is shifting. None of us are ourselves, and all of us are vulnerable.

Shay is restless and reckless. She tells me there’s a ringing in her ears, a fire in her blood that is only quietened by violence. The conditioning the monks forced upon her is fading, I think, and she’s never learned to control her instincts herself. I offered what help I could – to try and ascertain the cause, to provide a Polymorphed punching bag for her so she could more safely express that violence than by chasing undead wyrmlings into the Underdark.

She said it had passed. Then, that night, she and Harper had a sparring match serious enough to leave her limping and him with a black eye.

It makes sense. Hells, I am not so attached to pain that I resent someone else volunteering to be on the wrong side of Shay’s fists, and it would not be simple to maintain concentration on a Polymorphed form under those circumstances anyway. Nevertheless, an irrational corner of my mind is… _hurt…_ that I should offer all I can to my wastet-le, and that she should then turn to another for help.

It _is_ irrational. I am being ridiculous. I have noted several times already that she would be better served by Harper in many respects. Nor do alliances last forever; eventually we would part ways in any case. I could not logically fault her if she wished to sever ours now. I would question her judgement if she decided to pursue her god’s call to Sundabar without me – why dismiss a semi-competent wizard? – but I would respect her choice.

She said she loved me.

Among all the other information she dumped on me as though she’s been taking communication skills from Katy, there it was. Casually said, like an obvious fact. She knows what I am; she knows how I failed her in the past; she knows many of my limitations. And yet…

Nobody’s ever said that to me before.

I don’t know – I can’t –

Shay, you _fool._

So I no longer know how to approach Shay or what she needs from me, and she has always been the simplest and most familiar of the recurring.

Katy is subdued. Neither she nor Shay have said anything to me, but I suspect Shay has refused her advances; Katy watches her with a quiet hopelessness. She has been parted from Bob, and Harper… I shall get back to Harper. But as I see it, she is an emotional creature, invested heavily in her relationships with others and dependent on them. All those relationships – Shay, Harper and Bob – have changed significantly. I alone am still with her as I always have been. I know how unsuited I am to be an emotional load-bearer, and yet I seem to have argued myself into that position.

I am her teacher, and her control worsens when she is emotionally heightened; it is my responsibility to aid her… somehow.

In some ways her problems parallel Shay’s: the source of their power is innate and instinctual, and they were never taught to control it themselves. Perhaps that is part of her attraction? …well, it doesn’t matter.

So if my logic holds, Katy needs me more than before, and I don’t know how to answer that need.

Then Harper. Forever the most complicated and confusing of the recurring. He asked for my help tonight. I believe it is related both to the time Katy implied he had some matter to deal with and his recent black moods. He showed me a piece of paper with a noble crest on it – nondescript-looking thing – and a lock of hair. He asked me to _scry_ the owner of the hair for him.

She was a young woman – perhaps my age – in a richly-appointed bedroom with bars on the windows. She had the same eyes as Harper. I asked if they were family, but I don’t think he heard me. Between that, the bars, the letter itself, and his obvious distress, it would seem someone is attempting some sort of power play.

He asked if she could hear us. I told him I could only cast _sending_ to someone I knew. There may be another way…. I need to do some reading on the subject.

I _hate_ feeling helpless. 

There are other happenings I could record – giving Eshmira Abbar credit with the Reforged Ring, the imposter priestess we helped the Mandible place in the temple of Tyr, Anishta Daraam’s contact in Silverymoon and her somewhat patchy knowledge of events in the Enclave – but I have neither the will nor the mental capacity. Everything is eroding and I must find a way to hold…


	9. Codex #9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khem uses a new spell, trying to put Harper in contact with the girl she scried for him. It does not go well.  
> The party leaves Waterdeep, and, on the road, Khem deals with some uncomfortable truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khem and Harper swap some backstory moments. Since both of them have been written out already in other places, Khem doesn't rehash them here in any great detail.  
> Her story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15701064  
> Harper's: not on AO3 yet, will update.

… said she wanted to meet someone at the brothel. I accompanied her to ensure her safety, Katy presumably came along to make herself jealous, and, judging by the way he disappeared, Harper came to make the intended use of the facility.

Katy was rather sulky over Shay’s apparent acquaintance with the half-orc bouncer, at least until it transpired that what she really wanted was to punch him. I watched the spar, of course. The bouncer is bulky - apparently all muscle – and taller than Shay, but with nothing approaching her level of training or skill… at least, to my eye, which is not an educated one on these matters. At any rate, he was forced to concede the bout very quickly…

…the Thirsty, brows furrowed in intense concentration. Her left hand holds forceps; her right hand a scalpel. Curved grippers hold the skin and flesh away from her site; straps and buckles hold my hand down at the wrist and at each finger. She cuts through a tendon. The blood is scarlet on her blade, but flows black and slow from her incisions. The Thirsty sets down her scalpel. The Silent sets a vial in her hand and dark smoke curls from it. The Erratic tells them to stop, that this is not necessary, that she doesn’t understand how it came to this. The Silent looks at her, and she subsides.

The Thirsty spills the vial over the exposed bones and veins of my hand. It eats through them, dissolving them, until all that is left between the straps and buckles is a small, grey stone. “At last,” says the Thirsty, and the Erratic cries…

… preparing my spells, and found myself looking at where I’d scribed _dream,_ during my researches into Harper’s dreams of Tyr ordering him to repent. It had seemed a more likely origin for them than divine visitation – not without its logical issues, of course – and I’d scribed it down for further study. Redundant, as events turned out, but I realised how useful it could prove in this situation. I don’t know the girl I scried well enough for _sending_ , but _dream_ requires less familiarity with its target. Moreover, instead of mediating a 50-word exchange with the putative hostage, I could designate Harper as a messenger, allowing him to speak directly to her within a dreamscape under his control. It’s also not a commonly-used spell, and so, not the sort of thing one usually wards against. It carries the risk that the girl could dismiss it as purely a subconscious matter, but at least she would remember it, and Harper should gain the information he requires…

So I prepared it, then went down for breakfast. Katy was consuming her usual mountain of pancakes – actually, it would make sense if sorcerers require more food than other spell-casters, their magic is purely self-sourced and the energy must come from _somewhere_ – and Shay joined us soon afterwards. I found myself saving scraps of omelette for Twitch. Foolish sentimentality. I shouldn’t be so attached; it serves no purpose other than creating a weakness. I might never go back to Skullport, and there’s no future in it anyway. A tame displacer beast would only be one more target in Thay.

Nevertheless, I am weak enough, stupid enough, to miss the smooth fur under my hand, the rumbling growls, and a tentacle wound around my leg.

I digress, as always.

Harper stumbled into the inn, in a state of obvious injury and apparently in enough pain to disrupt his customary grace. He ignored Shay when she asked if he’d had a rough night, heading directly to his room. I had intended to speak with him as early as possible about the possibilities raised by the _dream_ spell, but it appeared to me that he required some space.

Katy, of course, followed him instantly.

She came downstairs later, having called outside his door until she grew tired of waiting to be let in. It didn’t augur too well for my attempts to talk to him, but I thought in this case my research might be more persuasive than her affection.

It was an interesting point, actually. When he thought it was Katy knocking on his door again, he seemed disinclined to permit her entry. When I identified myself, there was only a short delay before he invited me in.

He looked _terrible._ On top of the black eye from sparring with Shay, he had added a split lip, a cut and bruise to the cheekbone (punch?), hand- or fingertip-sized bruises to his throat, jaw and wrists (restraint? asphyxiation?), and a number of bite marks to his chest. He kicked a bloody shirt under his bed when I entered. Possibly he was attacked in an alleyway after leaving the brothel; possibly it was all acquired there. The extent of it looked more like Shay’s sparring than the kind of practices that ridiculous Shou pillow book referred to as ‘the thorns of the rose’, the Calishite text as ‘dissonances’, and Halvren as ‘reclamations’.

I… admired that in him. Not everyone has that kind of courage.

It isn’t my business, of course. My allies make their own choices; I can assist or advise if I’m asked, but it isn’t my place to question what they want or what they need, unless it puts me at risk. But here, in the relative privacy of the encrypted pages of my journal… I dislike seeing my allies injured; it suggests that I am failing them. Vengeance is owed to those who hurt those under my protection. And - illogically – even if this was his own choice, I want to make Harper answer for his idiocy in getting himself hurt. It is a poor way to treat an ally, nor will it help him negotiate whatever power play is being attempted against him.

But Harper survived whatever his night was, and that is, in the end, what matters.

I told him how the _dream_ spell might be used to put him in contact with the girl, if only he could tell me more about her. Harper evidenced the combination of incredulity and amazement I’ve come to expect when explaining some of the more interesting capabilities of wizardry (I admit, I am petty enough to find it flattering), although he did describe the spell as ‘horrific’.

I asked who the hostage was.

He didn’t answer immediately. It appeared as though he considered the question somewhat suspicious – as though I was offering to help him merely to pursue my own quest for information to potentially be used against him. He parried the question, asking what I had deduced.

It’s somewhat reassuring to see that neither his bruises nor his situation have _completely_ addled his brain. He also asked whether I could witness what happened with the dreamscape, why I would help him, what it would cost me and whether it exposed me to any danger, and whether I intended to keep any information on the whole powerplay confidential. All good questions to ask before accepting aid from a Red Wizard.

I answered his questions honestly. If I could detect his thoughts perhaps I could eavesdrop on a dream that way, but it’s a moot point where he’s concerned and I didn’t raise the possibility. I would help him because I owe him, both on a personal level and as his ally. He dislikes it when I phrase these matters as a debt, which continues to strike me as ironic: it is not as though my order is known for honouring promises in any case. That I mean to do so is almost purely a personal idiosyncrasy, and I’m not even sure I could hold to it under sufficiently adverse conditions. It is much the same case with his secrets. I hold them carefully, as I hold Shay’s, but I know myself.

I don’t think he entirely believed my reassurances – indeed, I hope he didn’t. Firstly, he should know me well enough by now to know what I am, and what I am not; secondly, he needs to keep his wits about him.  Nevertheless, I could see him allowing himself to be convinced, and to hope.

He told me that that the girl is named Celeste, and that she is his sister. He has spoken of his brothers before – two dead, another a cleric – but never mentioned a sister. Judging from his manner, and the many pauses in his account, he finds her difficult to speak about.

Owing to ‘fucking ridiculousness’ on his father’s part, Celeste was raised by his mother’s family, and he did not meet her until she was about twelve. He seemed emotionally attached to her, describing her as ‘funny, but serious’, and ‘smart’. He had wanted to ‘bring her home’ to his father’s house at one point, but it seems events did not permit it.

From what we saw when I scried her, she appears to be in his father’s house at present, although Harper has not been there in years; the bars on her bedroom window also struck him as unusual for a room that did not otherwise resemble a prison cell.

I asked a number of tactical questions. Harper’s information seems somewhat old, and limited, but to the best of his knowledge: Celeste’s mind isn’t protected as in the same manner as his (so probably not a genetic trait, unless it only manifests in males, or under certain circumstances) and there are no wizards in his immediate family, but his father has sufficient resources to hire magical help.

It had, of course, occurred to me that sending a lock of hair – or other body part – is an open invitation to scry its owner. The lock of hair he had could easily belong to a decoy, and illusions are not difficult to arrange – in some cases, they need not even be magical. Our earlier scrying of Celeste could contain no truth at all, only an image designed to propel Harper into a certain course of action. I thought that, since I was not using the lock of hair to target _dream_ , I would probably circumvent that issue.

In any case, I gathered what information Harper was willing to share, and it was agreed we would simply try to reach her. He seemed… peculiarly grateful that I would offer to cast a spell for him – as if I did not seek out opportunities to practise my art! I am not used to working in alliance… if using my talents in their interests is truly so strange, perhaps I have done more poorly than I suspected.

With that settled, we rejoined Katy and Shay. Shay intended to sell off some creature parts to Trina Burdock; I had suggested she might ascertain whether the apothecary were interested in the corpse of the drow wizard who so nearly killed me in Philock. Katy and Harper were disgusted that I still had it. Well, I had intended to animate it and put it to use, but I decided that respecting Shay’s sensibilities on the matter was more important than punishing it for its attempt against me, and there never seemed to be an appropriate time to dispose of it otherwise. A bag of holding is an airless environment; it wasn’t going to decompose distastefully.

There was a complete shift of personality between the anxious, unsettled and wary Harper I had been talking with upstairs and the self-possessed, ironic Harper who reprimanded me by my full name for refusing to hand over my bag. I have always considered he could lie or play a part better than most; it’s still intriguing and worth noting when he displays it so clearly. A reminder, I suppose, that he’s not someone to underestimate.

In any case, the others were successful in selling the body while I was at the Arcane Library, scribing spells and researching our destination. It was somewhat devalued; apparently drow eyes have certain interesting properties, and we should retain them if ever we again commence questioning a captive by blinding him. I believe they also bought horses while they were out; I suspect the fact I’ve never ridden one before portends a long and painful trip to the Silver Marches.

I spent the afternoon brewing healing potions with Shay. I haven’t done any alchemy since Mistress Aneth-ke’s classes in the Academy (I could almost taste the bullywug slime and cinnabar from that lesson on cross-contamination); I was not particularly skilled at it then, but I make a competent assistant. The conversation was… somewhat awkward. I have not forgotten that she said she loved me; I still do not know how to handle it. She did raise the question of sparring with me – I hope she did not guess I was somewhat hurt the last time the subject came up – which we agreed could be a rather one-sided affair. She can do little about me if I can keep her at distance – by flying, for example – but I would not do well within range of her fists.

Then, in the evening, I sought out Harper. His room was a mess, as though he’d pulled everything out of his bag of holding and thrown it on the floor. I suspect… no, it’s not even on that level as yet. I can sense a pattern building. In any case, once he was settled in a comfortable position to maintain an eight-hour trance, I cast _dream_ on him.

It’s always… intriguing, and deeply satisfying, to cast a new spell for the first time. There’s a small amount of doubt – any error in scribing can cast things awry, and quite badly so – but when the Weave answers your call and shapes itself about your hands and words... when you can feel the pressure building, demanding release… when it flows from you and the world changes itself according to your will… oh, then I could almost pity those poor, blind wretches who are not wizards.

In this case, it must be said, the effects were nothing much to see. I touched Harper’s shoulder, releasing the spell. His breathing slowed as the trance settled over him; when I spoke his name and wished him success, there was no response. I let myself out, locked the door from the inside with my _mage hand_ , and returned to my room to make this entry, and then to sleep…

… the sun beating down on thousands of bodies, flies buzzing on their open sores. Shimmering heat haze rising from them, blurring the details but not the extent. The plain was flat, stretching unvarying to the horizon, covered with the plague-dead. They were of every race imaginable, kuo-toa lying next to storm giants, illithid and gith thrown atop each other in death, gold dragons sprawled beside glabrezu. I could see almost everyone I ever knew lying near my feet – the Silent and the Erratic; Se-atma and all the rest of the clique; Nebastis; Mistress Kharzura and Master Xobek; Halvren, Bennika, Faraghor, Aphaesa, Vannos; Twitch, Lucky Jim, those damnable drow… even people whose name I never learnt.

All except the Thirsty.

I called her name, and then something stirred – a shape, heat haze wavering around it. Slowly it approached, resolved itself into her form. I ran to her, almost tripping over the head of that elven sailor, and threw myself into her arms.

Her hands were white. The plague boils erupted on them, and…

…well, and then I lost the dream, because Harper came hammering at my door.

I’ve never seen him like that. Normally he deflects, parries or laughs off questions; tonight he could not speak quickly enough. I think he was genuinely so unnerved by his experiences he simply spilled out everything, hoping desperately that I could make some sense of it for him. I am not at my best with my head cluttered with fragmented dream-imagery, but if it was a conscious choice rather than a panicked need, he displayed good judgement in bringing it to me immediately.

He began in a small, lightless room. There was one barred window, through which he could see the formal gardens of his father’s home. A basin appeared when the sight of them nauseated him. The bars fell away at a touch, but when he tried to climb out of the window he fell into the basin.

Harper turned his back on the window and saw a torch on the floor. He willed it alight, then saw a door. When open, it appeared to lead to the garden; when he walked through it, he found himself in a narrow tunnel of hedge instead. He visualised a door in the hedge, and was able to walk through it.

So far, fairly basic. I had thought the messenger of a _dream_ spell would have more control over the dream – in fact, I thought it would be more or less formless without the messenger’s conscious direction - but I may need to experiment with this. Perhaps Shay would not object to letting me try…well. Perhaps not until I know how to handle what she said to me. Katy, then. Harper might be willing, but for all I know, his experience was anomalous because of whatever it is that shields his thoughts.

He then found himself in a room similar to his starting point. The door on the opposite wall had an ornate lockplate, and in front of it was a creature – it sounded similar to a goblin, and apparently Harper was concerned it was Bob – with a key in its mouth. Harper asked for it politely, then demanded it, then attempted to will the goblinoid to hand over the key. No result. He tried to grab the key from its mouth, then picked the creature up and shook it. At that point, he just hit the door with the goblinoid. Still no result. It wasn’t until he pinched its nose shut, so that it had to drop the key or suffocate, that he got anywhere.

He should not have had such difficulty. This looks like intentional and directed opposition; someone who knows what they’re doing and is confident in their power. Unless Celeste is a natural dream-shaper with well-organised mental defences – unlikely, especially considering later events – I believe there was an outside force tampering with the spell.

Through _that_ door, Harper found himself in his childhood bedroom – apparently not the same as the room we saw when we scried the lock of hair. He saw Celeste at a window, facing away from him. When he called her name, a small model ship fell over. He says it is the sort of thing he might have owned as a boy, but is not certain whether this specific toy was his. (It seems like a reasonable symbol for him, given his naval service; I’ve never dreamed the Silent so, but there are distinctions between oneric divination and spell-crafted dreams). When he picked it up, he heard her say “Taliesin”. Her voice was that of the child she was when they first met, not of the adult she would be now.

Presumably it was desirable that Harper recognise her instantly. The question is: who desired it?

He approached her, trying to see her face. From whichever angle, she remained only a back.

This definitely suggests an illusion to me… some kind of spell-projection, only ever intended to be seen from behind and not for interaction. Troubling. This is the part that seems to unsettle him most, and I am not surprised. He described it vividly; I could almost see it myself. Turning and turning, and finding no depth, no face, no truth, this empty _thing_ put there for him to find… the bait in the trap.

At least, I hope it is a spell-created object, a mere dummy; if that was a genuine contact with his sister, most of the implications that occur to me are… horrifying. Not a word I use lightly. I remember hearing about the work of the transmuters at the Academy of Shapers and Binders. They can scoop out all the memories of a mind and implant false ones in their stead; they can remove the souls from two mortal enemies and fuse them into one unstable, corrosive amalgam; they can whittle a soul into a fragile sliver that retains no personality, memories, or traits, a bare husk to sustain life and obey…

They can do these things, but I never heard of them being able to reverse them.

It seems incredibly unlikely that a Red Wizard of those skills would be available for hire, or that someone from outside the order would even know what to ask if they obtained one – sufficiently so that I think mentioning this possibility to Harper would not be warranted. I shall watch for it nonetheless.

Less gravely, I suppose Celeste’s appearance could symbolise complete rejection of Harper -which I suspect would trouble him greatly - but at least she would be… whole.

He called her name again, asked if she could hear him or speak to him. His name, exactly as before, was all the answer he received. Then a figure of Waukeen fell, in the same manner the model ship had; Harper felt a sensation ‘as though all the blood was draining from him’; everything went black; he woke and came to me.

 He paced around the room as he recounted the _dream_ , interrupting himself frequently, hands gesticulating wildly; it was not simple to reconstruct his experience as I have recorded it here.

I should have prepared him for the possibility of a poor outcome. I am forever missing something with my allies… but I failed him in this. It was badly done on my part. I told him my impressions of his experiences, including that I _believe_ that I cast the spell correctly and that either outside interference or an unknown factor was responsible for the way the dreamscape resisted him and for its abrupt end.

I also explained the dubious nature of the scrying. Harper didn’t accept this easily; like myself, he has some queries about the timing involved, and he also believes that if his enemies know him well enough to concoct a trap for him, they know also that he is incapable of scrying.

I suggested that if his father – or whoever might be responsible - could acquire magical help, he could also have been assumed to do so. As, indeed, he _has_ done, after a fashion.

I scried again, at his request, but could not find the target. It didn’t surprise me, but it infuriated Harper. When he flipped that chair… hells. If I hadn’t been still a little bleary and slow to react, things could have gotten messy. Those reflexes were hard-won.

So the spell failed, which makes sense. If there’s another spell-caster involved in this – and I am inclined to think this the most likely factor – they would be aware that someone else is interfering. It’s difficult to say how much they might have learned of me: probably not too much from my _dream_ or _scrying_ , and for some weeks I’ve been under _nondetection_ , but if they’ve been keeping close scrutiny on Harper, the chances are they’re aware of the fact he’s been travelling with a Red Wizard of Thay. And a wild magic sorceress, of course, but for serious magical opposition, she can largely be discounted.

Harper tried to excuse himself – he’s involved me too much already, although he’s grateful I tried, it was time to let me go back to sleep – but I asked him for a moment.

It’s clear to me that he will not let this matter rest. Nor should he… but he is unsettled, disturbed. He will be reckless, and he will make mistakes. If this is a trap laid for him – which seems the most likely conclusion at this point – he will run his head right into it. He obliquely admitted as much when I asked him, although when I asked him where he was going he misinterpreted the question, said he’d find a statue of Waukeen ‘to yell at until someone struck him with lightning’.

It appears Waukeen is the goddess his cleric brother serves – which explains the figurine he dreamed, at least in part – and Harper is concerned that this whole plot may be divinely inspired. Waukeen, as I recall, is also known as the Golden Lady: a goddess of wealth, trade, merchants and greed. It seemed more personal than anything else to me, and I told him so, but there is one thread in common with the other gods we have been involved with recently. Like Tyr and Vhaeraun, Waukeen is but recently returned from a long silence.

For what that might be worth.

I let Harper go, after stressing that I would keep thinking about his situation, and that he was to let me know if there was anything else I could do.

From my window, I saw him storm out into the streets of Waterdeep. I don’t believe he has truly left us to pursue this – he did not have his pack with him – but, equally, I believe it’s likely he will. Shay’s business calls her, and me, to Sundabar; wherever Harper’s father lives, it isn’t there.

What that means for Katy… well.

There are many hours before dawn, but there’s no sleep in me. I am writing, and thinking… and waiting for Harper to return.

[a detailed illustration of a dead rabbit dangling in a snare fills most of the rest of the page. If it is hiding encrypted words, its coding is completely different and more subtle than other such illustrations in the journal. It appears to break off, unfinished]

Well. That’s disturbing. I wasn’t paying attention…

But he’s back, and without further injuries as far as I could see. Good…

… the rest of the day was quiet. Katy was at the stables, apparently enchanted by her new horse; Shay and I were brewing. I did visit the Arcane Library to read more about _dream_. I learned little that I had not already considered, but at least it confirmed some of my suspicions.

There were many potential points of failure: I miscast the spell, Harper’s mental defences, the scrying target was a decoy, I didn’t know Celeste well enough to lock on properly, the planar limitations, outside interference or an unknown factor.

The first is testable. If I can successfully cast _dream_ for Katy or Shay – or anyone else, I suppose, but only Mistress Kharzura really springs to mind, and she would not welcome my intrusion – then I can be sure I was not at fault. The rest are more difficult.

I will admit to overstepping my bounds enough to have cast _clairvoyance_ inside Harper’s room once. He appeared to be asleep – unsurprising, he must have been exhausted between his injuries, the trance of the _dream_ spell, and his usual insomnia. I could make justifications for this, many of them even logical, but in truth, I was… concerned.

… the Silent ran, as fleet as any other rabbit, over the hills, unhampered by the mask he wore. He was dashing for his burrow, a hole dug into the roots of a tall tree with white flowers. I have dreamed that scent before, but never encountered it in the waking world.

The Erratic let out a scream and ran after him.

She was shaped like a small, gangly goat kid, with horns too heavy for her head. Her tail had been dyed green, to resemble a snake; a cloak laid on her back like wings; and there was a large golden medallion hung around her neck. It was embossed with the roaring face of a lioness, and she kept catching her hooves on it and almost tripping as she ran.

There was a fence of bones. The Silent ran under it. The Erratic butted it, sat down hard, then tried again. And again. There were cuts on her head and blood in her eyes before she had the fence down, but she conquered it, and set out after the Silent once more.

There was a fence of thorns. The Silent ran through. The Erratic breathed fire upon it. It exploded in a thousand fragments that pierced and burned her white hide, but she conquered it, and set out after the Silent once more.

There was a river of tears. They slipped beneath the surface and were not seen again…

We left Waterdeep today. Katy is completely enamoured of her white mare and the barding which makes it resemble a griffin, to the point where she fell from the saddle and is still cooing over the beast; Shay is her usual self, and no doubt her excellent physical form makes this unpleasant business easier for her; Harper is apparently used to horses and is once more presenting himself as he usually does.

I, on the other hand, ache from the neck down, and hobble around the campfire in a manner that would have excited endless comment back in the Academy. Either Harper is truly restraining himself, or else he is simply focused on the situation with Celeste. Whatever the cause, I am grateful for it.

There was time to properly apprise him of my further researches in to the semi-failure of the _dream_ spell. He took it well, I think, and with full appreciation of the potential problems. If this is a wizard, for example, evidence suggests they are at least as strong as I am… he seems to feel he’s involved me in something dangerous by accepting my help, which amuses me. As I pointed out, I accepted his help when offered, which put him up to his neck in Red Wizard concerns – a more precarious position than most survive.

He spoke of Sundabar as though he intended to leave before we reached it. I am not surprised, and it isn’t for me to argue; nevertheless…

It is foolish. I have been around these people too long, drenched in their peculiar ways and overwhelming sentimentality, and the end result is that I am grown stupid and emotional.

I am reluctant to see Harper leave Shay and me behind – useful allies, who might well turn the tide for him in this business. At the very least, I believe he will need my skills to counter at least some of this mess… and should he also leave Katy behind, she will be devastated.

All I can really do, however, is to make sure Harper makes the best possible use of my spells while he may. I have also given him a notebook – he initially took it for some variant of Katy’s frequent attempts to persuade him to keep a journal – but it is intended for _scrying_. If he chooses, he can write in it, and I will look for it regularly; if he has a question, I can send my answer to him. It’s the closest to a proper two-way communication system that I could devise on virtually no notice with someone who claims no magic of his own… I doubt he’ll use it, honestly, but I will have done what I can for my ahk-veleth.

[dreams and descriptions of days on the road follow. The writer seems to have adjusted to riding horseback eventually, although she expresses frequent criticism of her mount, referring to it as B’vek, the Infernal word for ‘slobber’].

… he asked about Nebastis. I always thought he wasn’t quite done with the subject, although it isn’t really a sensitive one; I would never have mentioned her to Katy if I were not prepared to answer endless questions.

It was amusing, though, when I asked why Harper wanted to hear about her. He answered very carefully, trying to say the equivalent of ‘I never thought you had the emotional capacity’ in a manner he considered non-offensive.

As if I haven’t been trying to present myself as – as if I haven’t been trying to _be_ – someone entirely free from emotions and sexuality (although I never assumed he was fooled; Harper’s insight can be disconcerting). He thought he was insulting me, I considered it a compliment, and if that doesn’t sum up the way we seem to speak a different language, I don’t know what does.

I fumbled my way through telling him. It’s hard to wrangle five years of Academy life into a concise narrative, especially when he lacks so much context, and when there were… aspects of it I chose to gloss over, and others I barely let myself acknowledge at the time. I remember the journal entry I wrote after killing her was considerably less honest than these. I wrote it rather more as I wished to remember her death than as I experienced it.

He evidenced an instinctive understanding of the significance of doing her tattoos – at least, as much as could be expected. Well, he has several of his own; perhaps that aspect of it is not so different. He asked which of mine Nebastis did; I explained a little about why I’d chosen to have it placed on my spine instead of my skull.

Harper listened in much the same way he did when I told him about my dreams, although without the defensiveness or panic. No judgement, no surprise, and no sexual commentary. In moments like those, I value him highly; it’s a shame when he inevitably counterbalances it with something frustrating.

He asked if she’d suspected.

I’ve asked myself that so many times over the years. She must have known, at least initially, that I considered her intellect a threat, and that I was cultivating her purposefully. She must have guessed it couldn’t last forever… surely she couldn’t have cast us as a latter-day Raelthi and Thazad. If she’d known me nearly as well as I knew her, she must have known I’d always intended to kill her. Perhaps, as I told Harper, she even intended it – although I will not permit myself to believe that. The choice was mine, and the responsibility.

But if she could trust me, then either she never knew me at all, or she made a decision, a gamble, and she paid for it.

All I know is this: she was asleep when I cast my spell, and she never woke.

Harper asked if I second-guessed killing her – if I wondered what it might have been if I had not, if I might choose differently now. Also questions I’ve pondered since her death, and for which I have found no answers. I have thought, since travelling with the recurring, of how she would have enjoyed it. She had a gift for that – for seeing beyond necessity and fear to find small pleasures. She made me see them, too.

She would have drunk with Shay, told wild stories with Katy, laughed with Harper.

That is not what I am.

Harper suggested that perhaps killing her was doing her a favour. I think… there was something about the way he said it that I can’t place. Not entirely ironic, something more difficult. He said he was sorry for my loss.

 _My_ loss. My _loss._ As if that mattered, as if the murder of an ally was the same as misplacing a book. I had thought that telling him about her might make him more wary of me; that this is what I mean when I name myself an ally to him, Shay and Katy. But he seemed to be sincere…

He hesitated, when I asked for something in return - just any story he felt he could tell – but eventually he told me of the day he first met Celeste. He had been nervous about it, but she walked straight up to him and offered him an apple. Not the most fascinating tale, on the face of it, but there were two aspects that interested me.

The first was the way he told it. He was… obviously captivated at once, by the way she approached him without fear. By her charm and precocity. That enchantment, that attachment persists; just that one story and I could see that the leverage against him had been well-chosen. When I said as much, he admitted to wanting to kill everyone who stood between him and her safety, and acknowledged how that recklessness and determination could lead him into rash action.

The second was that I recognised it. At least, I believe I did. I remembered a dream of the Silent I had, only once, when I was about eight. He was at the tiller of a ship, alone. Ashes blew on the wind, and there was a glow on the horizon of distant fires, but the sky was full of stars. He stared up at them, searching for one star in particular – the lost star, the missing one. There was a flash, and he held an apple in his hand. The grey ribbon on its stem gleamed silver in the starlight burning from the apple. He smiled, then, a smile I’ve never seen before or since, and he set his course by that starlight.

I reassured him, when he asked, that I would be happy to cast dream for him again. I can’t see that there’s any additional risk to reattempting it, although they will probably be prepared for us this time.

He asked: “Khem, are you glad we met?”

I’ve never tried to lie to any of my allies, and I saw no reason to now. I could do without being asked to express emotions that I need to control better, that will only prove troublesome one day… but the truth was easily spoken. I am. Not just because I _finally_ know who the recurring are, and I’m not going mad; nor because they are useful and capable individuals; nor even yet because they have helped me.

Because, despite their confusing, irritating and irrational ways, despite the way they may prove a vulnerability, despite the way it will inevitably turn sour one day, I like them. I value them.

I care for them.

It will only make things harder in the end, but here and now, it is the truth.


	10. Codex #10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khem gets Katy and Shay to help her experiment with the Dream spell. The results are... mixed.  
> They fight some giants, and Shay is turned to stone. Khem is not pleased about it.

… thought I’d surprise her with it, but Katy did ask – apparently under the assumption I intended to inveigle her into something sordid – so I told her I thought I could craft her a dream of griffin-riding.

She squealed.

She also gave me a tattered old book to read, which detailed the adventures of a griffin-rider and presented what she felt was the authoritative account of flying on the back of a griffin. I will admit I have never had that experience, but I have been a bird with _polymorph_ and ridden one; I can safely say that feathers do not behave in that manner. Still, inaccuracies aside, it made for… entertaining reading. I think I saw a little of why people would ever waste their time with fiction.

I made my way into Katy’s dreamscape without any difficulty. She was dreaming of snuggling up to Shay. The attachment goes deeper than I thought. It’s not sex her subconscious yearning creates, it’s not flying off into sunset together - or whatever it was the griffin-rider and her partner did at the end of the book - it’s not even some domestic scene with an inexhaustible stack of pancakes and smoothies. Here, in the present, just a simple intimacy.

Being close.

I was able to recreate griffin riding to a degree that satisfied Katy’s daydreams. The dreamscape was not at all difficult to manipulate – a curious sensation, given how much I am at the mercy of my divinatory dreams. Katy was also able to influence certain details of the dream, apparently without major effort. This confirms that the opposition Harper encountered might have been either internal or external. Not so helpful, but I will take every data point I can acquire…

… so many gnolls. How could they have been so stupid? The villagers must have known there were feral gnolls in the area – we’ve been wading through them for days – why didn’t they arrange a hunting party? Or open negotiations? Move away? Gnolls are simply not that much of a threat as long as you _deal with them_ , instead of letting the problem fester until they burn down your village and render you down for stew!

I suppose there were probably extenuating circumstances. Still, the whole situation just seemed so unnecessary, such a pointless waste…

Further down the road, we encountered a winged kobold – a biologist, as it transpired - who was having some difficulty with one of her specimens. Once Katy had freed her from its tentacles, she introduced herself as Mabli, and asked us to join her for tea in her cave. Katy, who was gushing as hard over the kobold as she was over Grotana or the myconids, enthusiastically accepted.

If I were in Harper’s position, I would be frothing at the mouth; if I were in Shay’s, I’d be very little better. Both of them have tasks of some import to be done, even if the time factor is an unknown (whoever sent Harper that lock of hair doubtless has their next move planned, Yurtrus is quite capable of speeding Shay along if he’s displeased with her pace). I never had much patience for trivialities when there was work to be done.

Nevertheless, Katy had her way. The kobold’s research, as it turns out, is quite sound – which is an intriguing anomaly for her species - but she is lacking data on several local creatures and hoped that we might be prevailed upon to bring her specimens. She gave Shay a set of tools for that purpose, as Shay is trained in such matters, and waved off my concern that we were under a time constraint.

At length we were able to depart, and were shortly afterwards attacked by more gnolls.

All I can say on the matter is that this would never have occurred in Thay.

When we made camp, I approached Shay to conduct the next stage of my experimentation with _dream_. I wanted to ascertain how much control the target of the spell had, and who had priority between the messenger and the target, if they were opposed. Shay was the only real choice, of course. Possibly I might have learned something more from watching Harper manipulate a dreamscape, but that was not a step I was ready to take. I trust Shay; while I am inclined to believe Harper does not mean me harm, it’s not at all the same thing.

So I put Shay into trance, designating myself as the target of the spell, and went to sleep. I was dreaming the one I first recorded here some weeks ago - the Thirsty, carved of blue ice, black smoke boiling through the cracks in her surface – when she found her way in. She was less than impressed at the representation of herself, and it crumbled under her touch.

It was… interesting, to see the two of them in the dreamspace. The Thirsty, like the Erratic and the Silent, is an ever-changing construct of no fixed appearance. Sometimes, now, they look a little more like Shay, Katy and Harper, but the resemblance isn’t something I’d expect others to understand. Shay certainly didn’t, nor did she see why I called it the Thirsty. I don’t know whether I’m disappointed or relieved that she couldn’t feel its essence, that unchanging core of yearning and emptiness and dryness, the way I do. But it looked a thin and flimsy thing beside the warmth and solidity of her presence.

I asked her to take control of the dream, and she summoned up the house in Skullport. The goblin was bustling about muttering to himself, and Twitch was sleeping in front of the fire and snoring gently. I almost called him - my fingertips were itching to scratch behind his ears – but it wasn’t what I was there for, and it’s better I detach myself anyway.

We attempted a control test: Shay holding Lucky Jim’s colouring to its usual goblin shade, while I used my will to impose the colour blue on it. Blue it remained.

Shay suggested she might have been a poor choice as a partner for these exercises. It’s possible that someone else might have done better against me, true, but it is also possible that the target will always win when their will is set against the messenger’s. Other factors might have worked to my advantage: I cast the spell, it was my mind, I am used to dreaming, and I am a wizard. I have significant training in mental discipline, and I naturally expect to succeed when I impose my will on the mutable world around me.

A second test – Shay changed the kitchen to a wine cellar and I changed it back – had similar results (which suggests that the initial state, or the one which best matches a waking reality known to both participants, has no particular primacy). 

With some hesitancy, Shay brought a healthy and whole Paj walking through the front door. That orc has always weighed heavily in her memories – the ally who protected and cared for her until the elders punished Shay’s intransigence by triggering her conditioned rage against her bound ally, and then finishing the task with that careful attention to prolonged agony that is the signature of the Long Death.

I have never hated anyone as I did Khaizri. Se-atma and Khaseth, in their separate ways, were… difficult. Nofet was possibly the most dangerous opponent I ever had, and we were actively working against each other for years. Not one of them ever put as much effort into breaking me as those monks did into Shay, and Paj was their supreme achievement.

Unsurprisingly, Shay was… shaken to see her again, and the orc faded almost as soon as soon as Shay shaped her. I reached out and held her there. In retrospect, it might not have helped. I could have animated her, but only by creating a pastiche from Shay’s memories, and that seemed… unwise. So she stood there, staring at Shay, until Shay grew visibly unsettled and asked me to send her away.

We discussed Shay’s control. She feels she has none, but that this is nothing I should concern myself with. I told her that I didn’t believe that was the case (imposed conditioning is not the same as learned discipline and this leaves her vulnerable), but I wasn’t certain how to assist her with it, assuming she’s willing to accept my help. I will not insist on this point, or intrude where I’m not wanted. Firstly, that would just perpetuate the problem of someone else harnessing her rage instead of her controlling it, and secondly, as I told her, there have been more than enough people in her life insisting what should be done _with, to_ , and _about_ her.

She really does have more control than she thinks, though. She had no difficulties shaping the dreamscape to her will, except when she opposed me and when her hands changed; nor have I ever witnessed her lose control of her rage. This doesn’t mean that she has not, of course – I am not constantly at her side, and I have twice been rendered unconscious in battle – but it does account for a great deal of time and many possible stressors.

I encouraged her to take the lead – deciding what to test and how, and she did well – and after we played around with a golden dragon and some questions of scale [ironically, not a pun in Draconic, which the writer is using at this juncture], she said she had an idea I was not going to like.

She asked for a setting, a situation, in which I was not in control.

There were a few memories that occurred to me – Se-atma’s branding, Khaseth’s bindings, that drow wizard with his _Evrard’s black tentacles_ and his _cloudkill_ – and endless hypotheticals, not to mention more dreams than I can easily remember. But try as I might to think of or summon one of them for her, I was… plunged into that exam again.

It’s foolish. I had a degree of control then, and I was exercising it. It was, as I have told myself countless times, an experience not without its value; I learned something that not every wizard knows, or learns in time. It was not even physically painful. I have had nine years to come to term with it. I think, if Shay had asked me about it in the waking world, I could have answered without undue distress… well, all things are possible to a trained will.

Ha. You keep telling yourself that, and one day perhaps you’ll be able to withstand _ONE CORPSEFUCKING CANTRIP_

But in the dreamscape, I was there again. I _lived_ it, that moment before my knees went and I struck my head as I fell, their laughter and their magic, their _touch_ –

-only an instant before I was strong enough to banish it again, and I don’t know how much she saw or understood. Enough to bring the students back and drop an enormous brick on them. Enough to ask if that was _therapeutic_. Enough, afterwards, to summon up one of her worse memories (the dwarf Bran, the dragonborn Toz and the dire wolf, her first day at the monastery) and see what I could do about it.

I should note that she displayed greater discipline than I, here: I was subsumed into my memory, she remained apart from hers.

I changed the dire wolf to a blink dog (fascinating creatures, despite their ancient enmity with displacer beasts), which attempted to shower the child Shay with its slobbery affection (not a detail I consciously added).

In my unsettled state, I had said something about the arena, which Shay noticed; she asked me if I had been there in truth, and not just by rifling through her memories.

It was not something I wished to address, especially at that time. I’ve never known how to approach that subject with her, or even if I should. I thought about lying, but I’ve never told a direct lie to an ally, and I’ve never been particularly successful at it under any circumstance. I thought about telling the entire truth, but she would ask the question that would drop me right back into that exam, and I… I couldn’t face it.

So I gave her part of the truth. That I had been to her monastery, on an official visit with the other students of my year. She said she didn’t remember seeing me, and I agreed that she probably would not have, nor would I have been easily distinguishable from all the other purebred Mulan sixteen year-olds with bald heads, tattoos and red robes.

She didn’t ask. I didn’t say.

We spoke for a little time, and then Shay noticed that her hands had turned bone-white. Neither she nor I had consciously done it, and it resisted our attempts to fix it. Shay yelled at the sky – or Yurtrus, whose symbol the white hands are – and I told her of the dream I had experienced recently, where her hands were white and almost everyone I’d ever known was lying plague-dead.

This, of course, was hardly reassuring, and we wrapped things up. Shay offered her assistance if I needed further experimentation with the spell.

She broke the spell, disappearing from the dreamscape as neatly as if I’d cast _invisibility_ on her, and eventually a more usual divinatory dream superimposed itself. A new one, and simpler than most. I was ice, or encased in ice – motionless, cold and aching. There was a warm spot on one arm, where the Thirsty’s palm rested; another where the Erratic’s arms encircled my waist; one more from the Silent’s hand, curled over my shoulder.

They were not so terribly warm, but I was melting, and it was slow torture. I didn’t know – now or then – whether I was trapped in ice and they were freeing me, or the ice itself and they were destroying me. I know I said nothing, expressed nothing, for the ice held it all. The Silent lifted his hand free. I could feel its melted imprint. He shook his head and pried the Erratic free. The Thirsty hesitated one moment longer, then peeled her hand away. It left a thin layer of skin behind. She put it in his, and they all walked away, taking colour with them…

It troubles me, it all troubles me, but there is no time to dwell on it further. I am only grateful I didn’t return to memories again. It’s time to choke down some breakfast and ride…

[While the following section is recognisably the same hand and encryption style as the rest of the document, the characters are small and over-precise. The page appears as a dense block of black text, without the writer’s customary coloured inks and flourishes. There are frequent blots that suggest the writer left their pen sitting on the page motionless for long stretches of time, and smearing that suggests they were unusually careless with their hands or sleeves]

We were attacked on the road by two ettins and a stone giant. They’d already slain a lone woman with a cart. I did not take them as seriously as perhaps I should have. I was hanging back, keeping myself safe, and preserving the majority of my spell slots against something more threatening. I had virtually unlimited options to exert greater control over the battlefield.

I was arrogant.

The stone giant petrified Shay. I didn’t even know until Katy began screaming and Harper called for me.

I could do nothing.

If I had been watching, if I had _thought_ , if I hadn’t been amusing myself tossing the ettins around…

Harper went off to ensure the area was clear of further surprises – or to loot, or to mutilate the corpses, I don’t really know or much care – while Katy threw herself on Shay’s statue sobbing hysterically, and I… just stood there, furious and trying to think of something, anything, I could do to _fix_ this.

In the end, we got her onto a kind of sled harnessed to her horse, and found a small village, not too far away. There was an elf – probably a druid, if I remember Mistress Zhanti’s classes correctly – who volunteered to help. A _druid_. One of the least rigorous of even the divine magic disciplines, and he restored Shay.

While I stood there.

Katy hurled herself on top of Shay, babbling about how glad she was that Shay was back and safe. Shay was, naturally, very disconcerted by the whole experience, and possibly also by how Katy started flirting with the druid once Harper pointed out she was probably crushing Shay.

And I stood there.

Was it sheer self-castigation? Was it shock? I don’t know. I wanted to get out of there and leave the whole scene to those who understood what was going on and how to handle it. I wanted to apologise to Shay for how badly I had, once again, failed her. I could see she was shaken and I wanted to do something to fix that, to fix at least that. I wanted to _scream_.

Instead, of course, I stood there.

Harper arranged for us to stay the night there (there was time yet to travel; I can only assume he was also unsettled, or at least concerned about how visibly Shay and Katy were), and Shay excused herself. She wanted some time alone. After reassuring Katy, who was still at fever pitch worrying about if the druid had not been so close and how she would never have stopped until she’d seen Shay restored, Harper went out to talk to Shay.

I thought about protesting. She had requested solitude, and even if that were not a perfectly understandable request, her right to choose for herself should not be carelessly abrogated.

I didn’t. I was rather too busy being a stupid, angry, revolting lump of paralysed uselessness. Even if I had not, it was possible that Harper could, as always, offer her some comfort, some reassurance, some insight… any of those difficult emotional qualities. He could hardly do worse by her than I.

Except, I suppose, by leaving.

And that is another problem entirely. One I was almost enjoying working on – finally, something about him that I understood, that I could actually help with, that I could even begin to replay what I owe him. I had been researching, I had been thinking, I had a couple of potential approaches and considerations for him. I have no real stomach for it now. Oh, I’ll do what I can, of course. It’s all I’m useful for. But…

Shay was far more settled when she came back in. She and Katy spoke; Katy returned her ‘friendship pebble’ to Shay, they hugged. I don’t know if she’s changed as much as I have out here, or if I’m simply seeing more than I used to.

She didn’t say anything to me. I didn’t approach her.

I just sat there and watched.

Coward. Useless. Stupid.

Harper dragged three of the beds together, apparently so that they could all snuggle together to sleep. To ‘feel less alone’.

They are so at ease with their emotions. They don’t fear to let them rule, they don’t see them as vulnerabilities, they wave them like a banner for all to see. Like that’s safe, like that makes any sense at all, and day by day Shay is easier with them, more like them. It helps her, all these… it’s not something I can offer her. Everything that I am is a tie to Thay, to a past she would prefer to leave behind her.

It’s hardly surprising. She never needed me as much as I needed her. I’m the one who sought an alliance, the one who dragged her across the face of Faerûn and into ridiculous dangers like the Underdark and stone giants, all in the interest of keeping my own sorry hide intact. In her position, I wouldn’t think much of my kvaleth either.

Probably I would have killed her by now.

I think I may still be of some aid to Shay in Sundabar. I think I may be the only one left who will. Harper will leave, and either he takes Katy or she’ll follow him. That won’t end well for her, if I interpret my dreams correctly. I probably haven’t. Look at the years I dreamed those mage hands, and there was nothing I could do when the day came…

Here I am, circling back and hammering my putrescent excuse of a head against one bad experience, and completely missing the maggotshit point _again_ –

[the text breaks off in an angry smear]


	11. Codex #11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Immediately after her previous entry, Khem goes out and makes poor decisions.  
> Then she has heart-to-heart conversations with each member of the party, and adds fuel to her quietly ongoing identity crisis.

… completely missing the maggotshit point _again –_

[the text breaks off in an angry smear. It picks up again, marked as within a few hours of the previous entry, written in jagged, ugly spikes]

Finally they fell asleep and I could go out. It took more than usual effort to cast and hold _polymorph_ ; probably due both to the erosion of my emotional control and to the fact I haven’t been maintaining concentration against anything other than direct physical attack. But it was sufficient; I successfully essayed an hour’s scouting flight. The experience was… useful, although I marked nothing of note beyond the bulette diggings and the forest. Sheer muscular effort, the intense focus of an owl’s perception, the wind shrilling cold and sharp over my wings – all of it helped quieten my mind somewhat. By the time I landed to recast the spell, a blind idiot might’ve thought me almost calm.

 I set up _Leomund’s Tiny Hut_ outside the house and I remain there now… it isn’t the wisest decision, perhaps. A wizard in the field can hardly neglect to refresh her spells, and nor should an oneiric diviner refuse her portents… but I am not convinced I could sleep even if I tried, and I need to compose myself before the others wake.  And it’s not as though I wore myself out, certainly not trying to protect Shay...

[The next page is an intricate pattern that resembles Red Wizard tattoos. No translator or member of the order has been found to comment upon the possible application or purpose of the design]

She is outside…

… I am exhausted. I’m not sure what I expected when I saw Shay waiting for me to exit the _tiny hut_ , but it wasn’t to hear her apologise for permitting herself to be petrified. I told her that the fault was mine – she had been doing her best in that battle, while I, with my greater resources, hadn’t taken the situation seriously enough to _use_ any of them. She was unconvinced, as I was unconvinced by her counterargument that I was distracted by our experiment with _dream._

I had eventually concluded that I owed her the truth of what she witnessed. I have spied upon so many of her memories, most of them worse than that one of mine; I trust her not to betray it, and even to protect that particular weakness… but I did not find the words to offer it. And she was Shay. She only apologised again, as I did, and very slowly, took my hand.

She’s not like Harper, who is either ignorant or deliberately provocative. We established the necessary limitations and boundaries before we left Thay; she knows I _need_ my hands free. So she knew the weight of what she was asking, and what I was permitting. It was not… simple… to do so, especially not with that particular memory so recently and vividly invoked.

Well.

After she went off to make breakfast (apparently she enjoys the task), Katy came out looking for Harper and decided to have a lesson instead. She has improved a very great deal since I started teaching her; it has been quite a while since her last wild magic mishap. As much as I might wish to pride myself on this, a teacher really is less than half of the equation. For someone so easily amused and frequently childish, she can be very motivated and determined when she chooses. I’m just thankful she’s chosen to apply herself in this matter. She is also making effective use of that characteristic sorcerer mutability; you won’t find a wizard who can shape and release as many spells in as short a time as she does – even one using bled-off sorcerer magic.

I was less than pleased to conclude the lesson and find that both Shay and Harper had snuck up on us. They might have had no ill intentions, but to find myself that blind to my surroundings is extremely troubling. Harper felt impelled to comment upon my obvious fatigue, and even to suggest we should stay a bit longer. Ridiculous… although I noted, and appreciated, that he would offer to delay his own errand further for such a trifling matter.

Most of the day’s journeying passed without incident. We were indeed attacked by bulettes at the spot I’d seen their activity. A roc carried one off (I’d read about them, I’d seen illustrations, but neither prepared me for just how enormous they are. The sheer size has the instincts screaming that you are nothing but a mindless prey beast). There were also a few treants who attacked the bulettes and roc alike, but were courteous enough when Shay asked them for bark samples. All they wanted in return is the death of the roc, which is apparently disrupting the local ecology.

It was not something we were minded to go out of our way to secure, but it’s possible that we’ll see it again as we travel…

… climbing up the rope after Nebastis, into the small extraplanar space shaped just for the two of us. Her laughter as she pulled the rope up after us, hiding us away, had a different edge to it. Her teeth were pointed when she nipped at my lip. They met in my tongue, and tore it away. My mouth filled with thick blood, clotting into one thick mass, too large to swallow, too large to spit out. I raised my hands to her face, and saw it didn’t fit. It wasn’t her. She laughed at me, my tongue waggling in her mouth next to hers, and her laughter was that of a classroom of Red Wizards. I scratched at her skin, peeling it away in wet, limp handfuls. I plucked the false eyes away, the clever, beautiful hands, and I saw the truth, the person who’d hidden themselves in that familiar guise all this time…

A new one, and whatever epiphany I dreamt, it was lost when I woke. I have no real idea who it was beneath a veneer of Nebastis. I always know when one of the recurring is involved – at least, I’ve always believed I did - but I suppose I wouldn’t know if I missed one, like the dream of those two men I never identified.

Harper took me aside to discuss _his_ dream. He would have done so in Common if I hadn’t stopped him. Shay and I are the only ones who speak Mulhorandi here, Katy and I share Infernal, but I don’t have a mutual language with Harper suitable for private conversation in mixed company. I had to make do with casting _tongues_. In Dwarvish, then, he described dreaming of that faceless mannequin of his sister, and of circling her endlessly.

It might just be a subconscious manifestation of how troubling that image was in the _dream_ I cast for him; it might have been something more. He asked whether I’d sent it to him. I told him no, and explained that I might not be able to enter his dreams at all, given his immunity to _detect thoughts_ , and, moreover, that I would not do so without warning him of my intention. It would be unnecessarily invasive - unless dictated by urgency – almost certain to incur his ire, and probably hazardous. The dreamer has far more control over the dream relative to the messenger than I’d ever expected, and I believe Harper possesses sufficient acuity to defend himself in that setting.

He certainly already knows a weapon that would serve him well against me.

In any case, he gave me permission to try. I believe I may, at some point: it would yield additional data on his mental protections and whether _dream_ circumvents them, which in turn might shed some light on the Celeste problem; I could possibly determine whether there was any issue with his handling of the dreamscape, and offer him some guidance or instruction on that aspect; and, lastly but certainly not absent, I remain curious about the way he thinks and views the world.

I confess the prospect is severely intimidating.

Apparently he is much troubled by nightmares, as I once surmised. I remain uncertain if the exercises I used in my earliest days at the Academy would be of aid to him, but it cannot hurt to offer them at some point.

Having warned him that he would dislike them, I told him about the two angles of attack I had worked out. _Contact other plane_ would gain some more information than we already had, at the risk of my mind temporarily breaking under the strain (a horrific prospect and not one I take lightly, but the chance is miniscule and the potential benefit high… if only it truly _is_ temporary. Several grimoires are less than factual about these matters.) As predicted, Harper did not like this; in fact, I believe with a shred less self-control he would have castigated me at great length.

The second… well. Harper has implied that whatever protects his mind is under conscious control. If he could lower it and share his memories of Celeste with me, using _detect thoughts_ , then I would know her as he does, which surely must be well enough to target _dream_ or even _sending._ Harper reacted to this almost exactly as I anticipated: barely-veiled hostility at an obvious and unwelcome ploy to intrude upon his mental privacy. Entirely fair, if not completely justified. I didn’t stress the matter, but the option is there if he decides he needs it.

I also gave him a piece of advice. Evidence seems to suggest that there is a spell-caster of some skill entangled in this matter of his sister; since he has neither knowledge nor magic of his own, he needs someone to remedy those deficits. It would be me, if I could go with him… but Shay’s business takes her elsewhere, and my responsibility to her takes precedence over mine to him. I do regret that in this particular case; I would much rather deal with a power play which has magical involvement than some errand assigned by an orc god of disease. It’s one of the few scenarios I’ve encountered out here that I am actually trained for. But if I cannot be there, he should have something like me at his disposal. Silverymoon has an organised guild of wizards, and he confirmed our paths lie together at least that far; I recommended he hire an abjurer there.

I even had a recommended spell list he could ask for, but by his tone of voice, I judged it would not be welcomed. He did thank me for my efforts, and said he understood that my loyalty was with Shay, that he wouldn’t ask me to leave her without aid.

I asked Harper what he intended to do about Katy. The question had occurred to him – good, since it’s an obvious one – but he had no answer. He feels she would resent it if he chose for her (which implies leaving her behind), but equally dislikes the idea of ‘making her choose’. I can’t say I really sympathise; so much of my approach to my allies, particularly Shay, is based on protecting their right to make their own informed decisions. In that spirit, I told him that I’d dreamed Katy chasing him, and that it had not ended well for either of them. Naturally, he found this less than reassuring.

He floated the idea of leaving without telling her he was going, hoping to be alive to find us after this matter is dealt with. Rather a tenuous proposition.  I told him that as the person who’d have to forcibly restrain Katy from following after him, I’d prefer he warned her first. He seized on that mildly facetious suggestion, asked if I would really do it. I suspect he wanted to hear that I would, but it wasn’t as simple a prospect as that.

I mean, leaving aside the question of whether the protection I owe Katy outweighs respecting her right to choose – even once Harper’s wishes as my ahk-veleth are taken into account – the question of how that would be practically accomplished is not a simple one.

And I am reminding myself of Khaseth the longer I think about it, so I shall move on swiftly.

I told Harper that I did not believe this would be the end of our acquaintance, that I have dreamt him for too many years for it to make sense that we simply part ways here and then he goes and gets himself killed in some ridiculous trap. I agreed that he could take that as a compliment, although I would have preferred he take it as the reassurance I intended it to be…

…lost in the cloud of swirling ashes. The Thirsty had her hand on my shoulder, and the Erratic’s hand in hers. We were masked in ash, but it was no protection or aid as we sought the Silent. The Erratic was choking out his name, and the Thirsty was groping into the storm with her free hand, while I tried spell after spell, and nothing could find him. Then, suddenly, he was there – bent over a wound, weeping, a ribbon in one hand and a serpent’s scale in the other. I took the ash-mask from my face and offered it to him…

[The writer records several dreams over the next few days of travelling. Recurring themes include hands, ash, fish, ribbons and blood]

…a large party of elves who were nauseatingly cheerful – as Shay said, clearly smoking something recreational – presumably off to revel and get splinters in their sphincters. One of them thought Katy resembled an elf he hadn’t seen in three hundred years (Aldred, apparently an eccentric).

Then, I believe, Harper asked Katy if she would come with him. I didn’t hear the beginning of the conversation, but within a couple of minutes they were clearly audible to me, Shay, and probably every pair of ears in a mile’s radius. They were screaming at each other about Harper going into danger and not telling Katy exactly what it was, about how he didn’t want to drag her into it but possibly needed the help, how he couldn’t protect her and how she didn’t need protecting, etc.

I can’t believe he was concerned about _my_ discretion.

After they’d wound down somewhat, they both rode on Harper’s horse. Neither Shay nor I intruded, but she’s not stupid or deaf.

Perhaps that played some part in the balance of recklessness and calculation displayed in her tactics when the roc attacked. She jumped high enough to catch it by the claw, then drove her fist into some nerve that brought it crashing from the sky. Nor did it rise again; she sought other vulnerable points and kept it stunned while we killed it. It seemed… rather an ignominious end for so majestic a creature, but I can’t deny it was effective.

Once we’d set up camp, Shay settled herself by the water’s edge, watching the pike tentatively nibble at the body of the roc; I went to speak with her. As I’d surmised, she was… troubled by learning that Harper intended to leave. She’d also picked up that it was no revelation to me.

She is… more emotionally attached to him than I’d recognised. There is part of me that thinks it will be a good thing when he leaves, and it is again only the two of us (probably); that I need no longer worry over him claiming her loyalty… but it’s a small part. I haven’t taken that concern seriously for some time. I am, however, slightly concerned about Shay, who has turned to him for aid with emotional issues more than once. I can’t help her as he does.

There is also another snide little train of thought, which suggests all this could have been avoided if she’d never taken up with Yurtrus in the first place. We could have gone with Harper to solve his issue, if that was desired by all parties involved, or turned our attention properly to getting her away from the Long Death, or any objective of our own choosing that did not involve pestilential deities.

Still, I can’t truly blame her for it. It’s standard operating procedure – if you’re not strong enough to play on your own account, you find someone who is and make yourself useful to them. It’s exactly what I did with the Embassy and the Enclave, after all, with the critical differences that a) I knew what I was doing and b) Red Wizards are somewhat safer to defy than gods (possibly – the murder of Tyr’s high priestess has had no consequences yet, whereas Metoth Xurn would certainly have shown me some if he’d survived).

There are too many factors, too many strings, and too many players on the field. Nothing’s clear in this mess of conflicting loyalties and responsibilities.

Shay told me of a dream that she’d had, the same night Harper dreamed of the Celeste-mannequin (which would be the same night as the thing in Nebastis’s skin; possible correlation?). She saw herself with white hands, following and unable to catch up to Razgug, the priest of Yurtrus in Skullport who inducted her into the cult. When she tried to gain more information by reaching out to Yurtrus, she had a vision of our campfire, spewing small winged insects instead of smoke. When Harper brushed one away from his face, his hand and wrist were bone-white.

I offered Shay the first interpretations that came to mind – that either her deity wishes to make converts of her travelling companions, or that it was symbolic of disease. We may indeed all be infected or plague-carriers by now, given Shay’s exposure to that bowl of muck in the temple, and our proximity to her. I haven’t seen any evidence of it, but who can be sure?

Shay suggested that it might indicate that Harper is marked for death. Myself, I tend to feel that the most likely cause of his imminent death is this trap baited with his sister, and I can’t see how Yurtrus might have an interest in it. But I am painfully aware I don’t know enough, and, as I told Shay, I suspect in this instance her instincts are a better guide than my logic. I did offer to cast _contact other plane_ for her (being _so_ determined to lose what remains of my sanity for the sake of others), but she feels that the god has probably said as much as he’s going to.

She needed some time to herself and walked away; I went back to the campfire. Harper sighed, then went after Shay. I asked him not to - being less useless than last time – but he ignored it anyway.

Katy asked after Shay, which turned into a brief discussion of theology, keeping in contact once she and Harper leave, and interpersonal dynamics. She feels… useless, purposeless, and excluded – that Shay and Harper make their plans without asking for her input, and that both of them see her as someone without anything worthwhile to contribute.

She called me a good friend, and a good teacher. She said my honesty was appreciated, that even if she didn’t like what I had to say, she valued that I didn’t try to shield her. When I asked if there was anything she needed from me that I was failing to provide, she couldn’t think of anything – except possibly hugs.

Finally. Finally something, in all this maddening lack of clarity and sense, these people who matter so much and I understand so little, just one positive thing. It doesn’t come with questions or confusions, like Shay saying that she loves me; it doesn’t involve me constantly pushing and being told that I should not, like trying to assist Harper. It’s just an acknowledgement, cast plain and simple, that what I do makes sense to Katy, that it helps.

It is an unfortunate measure of how lost I have been that _Katy’_ s approval should reassure me so much.

Eventually Harper came back, and Shay did not. I expressed my dislike of the fact that he had twice ignored her wishes when she wanted to be alone, to which he responded with that characteristic ‘I hear what you’re saying but you’re obviously wrong’ attitude.

Katy turned in, Harper remained on watch, and I… I found enough privacy to cast _contact other plane_. Shay wasn’t back to take care of the matter if my mind should snap, which was uncomfortable, but I chose a place within Harper’s line of sight. If I’d started to gibber he probably could have handled it.

It wasn’t like last time. With so little information, I couldn’t set focused parameters like ‘a servitor of Tyr’, I had to leave it as an open ‘anything that might know’. What I got sounded like some form of fire elemental: a voice made of the crackling of flame. My questions and answers were:

Whose hair was Harper sent? Sister.

Who sent it? Enemy.

Where is Harper’s sister, Celeste? Arrabar.

Whose dream did Harper enter when I cast the spell? Unclear.

Has Celeste suffered any irreversible damage to body, mind, or soul? Unclear.

This, of course, was not entirely helpful, but it was about the degree of it I was expecting. ‘Sister’ doesn’t necessarily mean _Harper’s_ sister, and it could be assumed that _someone’s_ enemy sent it anyway. The question of harm… well, it was always a long shot, since it depends on an extraplanar having a good understanding of mortal limitation and resources. The only definite answer was ‘Arrabar’, which – as it turned out – was where Harper was already headed.

I told him what I’d learned, fully expecting him to react badly. Instead, he asked only why I would help him when I had made my irritation with him clear.

Honestly! If I had permitted irritation with him to dictate my course of action, one or both of us would probably have died long ago. And, as I told him, emotional considerations are rarely relevant to tactical decision-making anyway.

Then he looked at me, entirely serious and certain, mercifully free of smirk or entendre. He said “You care about me.”

There wasn’t much point in attempting to deny it. However he came to the conclusion, he was correct… but it’s a hard thing to have so recently acknowledged it myself and then to have him just _see_ it like that. To have my vulnerabilities stated openly, before I’ve worked out how to defend them or even _live_ with them… For a moment, all I could see was that dream of chains again.

So I told him “about all of you.”

He thanked me, and said that he obviously cared about me as well.

I think he was sincere, although I don’t know why he should believe it’s obvious. I am in unfamiliar waters here, and it’s such a nebulous term to begin with, even worse than Shay’s ‘love’. I know what I mean when I say ‘care’: there’s an emotional attachment which strengthens the sense of responsibility that was already present. It means I will hold their interests equal to mine, even above if it’s warranted. I will defend their lives at significant risk to my own. Even their ridiculous nonsensical emotional storms I’ll do my best to calm. I want their well-being.

But… I didn’t acknowledge it this way, and certainly she wouldn’t have pointed it out… but I cared for Nebastis, too.

Emotional considerations are rarely relevant to tactical decision-making.

I did give Harper that warning. I told him that caring for me was a poor decision.

Hells, if I’d wanted to ingratiate myself with them, I could have done so months ago. I could have made myself likeable. I could have flattered Katy, hugged her, probably even let her sleep beside me. I could have flirted with Harper, certainly taken him to bed by now. I could have spun sob stories about my time in the Academy until Shay believed I had been just as ill-used as she. Not without effort or cost, but I could have done it. Probably it would even have been safer.

Instead I let them see the Red Wizard, spurred by fear and ambition and power. The woman who’d kill someone who trusted her when their guard was down. I talked them through the calculations of use and necessity and threat, showed them exactly how I think and how I do not feel.

And _still_ Shay loves me, and Harper cares for me, and Katy says I am a good friend.

They are all insane.

When the hard choices come, I won’t be able to protect them, and they do not appear willing to protect themselves.

[The following page is a sketch of three hands. One is scarred, particularly over the knuckles, and clenched into a fist. Another splays slender fingers; one of the long, black-painted fingernails is broken. The third displays a few small scars and a fine dusting of hair, and is wrapped elegantly around the grip of a blade. There is no discernible text encrypted into this illustration.]

Better. Where was I?

While they were away from the campfire, Harper apparently discussed his departure with Shay. She told him to ask her to accompany him, and Harper was almost swayed before his conscience (?) got in the way of his best interests. If Shay goes with him, of course, I follow; he has four allies of proven strength and known capabilities to assist him in his rescue mission. Certainly there are situations where he’d be better off alone, but it doesn’t sound like this is one of them.

I told him that if Shay said that, then maybe he should have. She can make her own choices and risk her own consequences.

He said: “I think that’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want to be the cause of more consequences. Maybe… maybe you weren’t entirely wrong about me, all this time. Maybe I’m just dangerous.”

If I had a spell scroll for every time we circled back to this – my assessment of him and why it bothers him – I would be considerably better armed than I am already. It’s still a compliment. It is still an acknowledgement of his capabilities and of his unpredictability… which are all objective facts. Ignoring them would be like talking about a black furry creature begging for scraps and purring, and failing to mention it’s a displacer beast with sharp fangs and claws and a trick with bending light to make it difficult to hit…

But instead of chasing that particular wyvern to its nest, I just told him to decide what his priorities were. If he wants to safely get to Celeste and get her out, he needs help; he has allies that are willing to assist him; all he has to do is trust that they know what they’re doing when they accept the risks. As I did when I told them about Philock and let them enmesh themselves in Red Wizard business.

He wasn’t certain it was a fair parallel, largely because this is _his_ problem – understandable, personal bias being what it is – and because it has its roots in his past.

“Because the things that shape you don’t change, and some of them are always raw,” I said. Those I do understand.

He repeated the point he made a while ago: that he considers I am much more emotionally literate than I claim, and I repeated mine: only when I speak from experience.

 Then he said he’d cry if I didn’t stop, so I did. Imagine admitting that to something like me, though. ‘Yes, you’ve hit a weak spot, and if you keep prodding at it you’ll really see me lose control’. Imagine, also, that I would nod and say nothing more…

 Eventually, however, he excused himself to sleep, leaving me with the watch. I cast _sending_ to Shay, to see if she was safe and whether she needed anything. She said she was, that she could see the campfire.

 Imagine that I would be keeping watch over two people who’ve burrowed into each other’s arms for comfort, and worrying over another one who is probably sitting in a tree somewhere in the night.

 I don’t really know what I am any more.


	12. Codex #12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party reaches Silverymoon, where Harper has an unexpected encounter with his past and the plot thickens.  
> Khem speculates and theorises at GREAT LENGTH

… very subdued, at least until we came on a little valley – almost idyllic, really, with its clear sky, long grass and bright, sweet-scented flowers. Katy begged for a break, and immediately began to pick the flowers and thread them into garlands she later used to bedeck Harper, Shay and her horse.

Harper asked to speak to Shay, and she motioned him toward privacy; he shook his head and made it very clear that he intended to conduct the conversation where everyone could hear it. Unusual, but very informative. I don’t know if it’s at all representative of how they usually interact when isolated (since they weren’t), but I confess it wasn’t what I’d expected.

When they spoke by the roc’s waterfall, Shay was somewhat upset that Harper had intended to leave without warning her or asking her to accompany him (which is exactly what I did to her back in Skullport, and I should have known better). Harper had chosen to address this matter publicly, from a somewhat unexpected angle. As far as I could parse his argument, it boiled down to:

> \- Shay was angry that Harper had not involved her in his concerns.
> 
> \- Harper felt this was unjustified when he had been trying to protect her from a potentially dangerous situation and she already had pressing business of her own.
> 
> \- Shay said something about how it was ‘unreasonable’ that we had travelled this far toward Sundabar before changing our minds. I got the impression that Harper viewed this as an attempt to make him feel guilty about pursuing his objective above hers and that he resented it, but this is highly speculative on my part.
> 
> \- I believe he also felt he could not ask her to put his needs over hers in this matter. Also, the way she reacted suggested to him that she prioritised her possible abandonment over his sister’s peril. Harper was angry that he had to waste time and resources soothing her emotional state when he needed them to deal with someone he values being used in a power play against him.
> 
> \- To sum up the previous two points, neither of which I am certain about, I think Harper was accusing Shay of selfishness (I remember when Master Djanbi had to explain that the concept had negative connotations in our Common lessons – it took _hours_ ).
> 
> \- Harper was immensely frustrated that Shay had reacted so strongly to him leaving without learning any of the relevant facts first. Even when he practically _ordered_ her to ask him, evidencing every intention of explaining the situation, she remained as silent as a chastened slave. Harper, of course, has always been evasive to direct questioning and it might have been futile, but Shay didn’t even try.
> 
> \- He was also angry that she tends to passively accept the circumstances around her, without trying to change or clarify them – that she permits others to decide for her.

It was… an unusual argument, and I need to think on it more; I’m not certain I have it correctly or how fair it is. But I know I likewise have little patience for emotional considerations when there is a real problem to be solved, and I, too, try to encourage Shay to make her own decisions. We go about it in very different ways – I don’t really know how much of her past Harper has, and he certainly doesn’t share the Thayan cultural context – but we are agreed on that much, at least.

I approached Shay after Harper had finished lecturing her. She was almost as unresponsive to me as she had been to him. She had said that she had negotiated with Yurtrus, enabling her (and, by extension, me) to accompany Harper wherever he was bound instead of pursuing the deity’s interests in Sundabar. I asked her about the nature of that bargain; she said only that she would let me know when she was inclined to speak of it.

That is her right, of course, but I have misgivings about how far she may have committed herself to this god… particularly as I have bound myself to aid her in the matter. She admitted to a distaste for dealing with deity-spawned issues, which is not entirely consistent with negotiating with them...

… faintly golden light, flickering from the jonquils burning in the fireplace. The air was heavy with their scent as the Thirsty turned her head, watching the Erratic over her bare shoulder. Murmuring her name, the Erratic traced the intricate scars on the Thirsty’s back, her fingertips seeking out every knot and line. She kissed the tattooed slave markings, which flared with silver light and disappeared. The Thirsty turned in her embrace, smiling and certain. She helped the Erratic step free of her dress. There was the tolling of a silent bell, the blowing of a motionless wind. Black-painted lips trembled, incredulous joy, exhaling breath that froze and blackened the grey skin beneath it. White hands stroked pale skin, careful inexpertise, and purulent blisters rose in her fingers’ wake. The fireplace was full of bones, and the air full of charnel ash –

Really? Have I not dreamed Shay with her god’s mark upon her often enough already? Are we all not aware of Katy’s wild magic? Did I really need to see them both in a context which is so manifestly _none of my business_?

[Two pages have been torn out from the text at this point]

… headed for the Dancing Goat Inn (such ridiculous names!) when we passed through the Silverymoon marketplace. Harper saw something – someone, as it proved – that stopped him as though paralysed for a long moment, before he slipped down from his horse, handed me the reins, and asked me to take care of the others before disappearing into the crowd.

The horse was not too difficult to keep under control, but the same cannot be said of Katy. She was distractible as ever I’ve seen her, careening from elven street-entertainers to large pots of flowers to city guards to pastry shops. It took us approximately twenty minutes to reach the inn, with the result that we walked in and found Harper already there, deep in conversation with a man in robes and a woman in armour. Katy rushed to his side, of course, and immediately started chattering away; I waited until I’d ascertained whether Harper wanted Shay and me to approach.

As it turned out, the man was his brother Jorran, the cleric of Waukeen; the woman, his bodyguard Nepotyna. As it turned out, he had also received a letter marked with a crest and a lock of a woman’s hair; he was in Silverymoon attempting to hire mercenaries and teleportation services across the continent to Arrabar.

Katy reacted predictably to hearing that Harper had a sister and that she was in danger – with an impulsive promise to save her and what appeared to be incipient jealousy of a rival for Harper’s attention or affection. Shay reacted predictably to the whole situation by not engaging. Harper reacted predictably to Jorran mentioning his sister in a crowded tavern and in front of people who didn’t already know about her by looking ready to throttle him. I reacted predictably by suggesting we take all further discussion to a space that could have some rudimentary protections cast around it.

Predictability is a useful trait in one’s enemies; not so much so when you’re demonstrating it for them.

We went upstairs. I _messaged_ Harper to ascertain a) how much information he wanted to give Jorran and b) whether it would be wise to reveal myself as a Red Wizard. He said to tell Jorran everything of Celeste, but left the latter question to my discretion – along with the warning that his brother was ‘dumb, but not stupid’. That was less clear than Harper might have supposed, but suggested caution to me.

So I cast _Leomund’s Tiny Hut_ around us before commencing my investigations (I wish I had access to a decent library or sufficient resources to perform the experimentation that would clarify exactly how much of a protection it is against divination). _Detect magic_ told me that some form of spell-sensor had been placed on Jorran’s letter; _identify_ that its closest parallel was _clairvoyance_ – but it felt Abyssal.

 _Identify_ , of course, is only really useful for properly-developed and codified spells in the usual disciplines; it doesn’t make much of spell-like racial abilities or quasi-magical effects. In the same way, _detect magic_ can classify active or ambient magic into one of the six schools, but sometimes those categories are too limited (as per Harper’s protective aura). So if the spell-sensor was placed by Abyssal magic, as I surmise, it makes sense of the somewhat vague results, and of the fact that when I tried to _dispel_ it, it felt like a contest of wills rather than the clean cancellation of a spell by properly opposed magic.

When I cast _contact other plane_ , searching for an extraplanar entity that knew about current events in Arrabar, I spoke with a voice like the crackling of flame. This, too, might indicate the Abyss, but I would not list it as evidence thereof.

Abyssal magic. At the moment, I can think of only a few ways in which it might plausibly be involved. Firstly, a demon is our opponent and acting freely. This, needless to say, is not a promising prospect. Secondly, our opponent has a bound demon in their service. Better, although not by much; the knowledge and power necessary to enthral a creature of that kind is considerable, although there is a weak link. The demon is highly likely to resent its bondage and to turn against its summoner if given the opportunity. Thirdly, our opponent is a warlock with Abyssal patronage. Good or bad, depending on how active its patron might be in protecting its investment and how practised the warlock is. Fourthly, our opponent might have an Abyssal artifact in their possession which was the source of the spell-sensor; this is a best-case scenario and I do not seriously propound it.

With the spell-sensor removed, I cast _scry_ on the lock of hair Jorran had been sent. The vision thus was created was _exactly_ that which I saw when I _scried_ Harper’s – the girl, her location, her expression, her position, literally every detail I could notice were _identical._ Harper is the only other person who could have realised this, and he lacks the training to really recognise its significance.

Say, for argument’s sake, that both locks of hair were genuinely harvested from Celeste. I admit my results with _scry_ have been reliably… odd… but both should have maintained a link to the person of whom they were once part. I should have seen where she was and what she was doing at the exact moment I cast the spell. It strains belief or coincidence to the breaking point to suppose that she should have been naturally in the exact same position, et cetera, several weeks apart, and even that ridiculously unlikely hypothesis fails as soon as you consider that I cast the spells at different times of the day, and the angle of sunlight through the bars of her window was the same in both visions. So if _scry_ functioned exactly as intended… well, the only explanation that occurs at present is some incredibly advanced version of _time stop_ , and if our opponent can hold that spell in place so long, we might as well be gnats plotting against a tarrasque.

I have read theorists who suggest that something like a lock of hair functions as a scrying focus only as long as the severed part has a whole counterpart in place – that is, if the hair was taken from Celeste’s head, and she was then shaved bald, the hair would then have no connection to her at all. If this were the case – assuming the theory correct – attempting to _scry_ using it should simply have failed, as if she were dead or on another plane. As far as I know, at any rate, but I am aware of just how limited my knowledge is.

Alternatively, my _scry_ could have been meddled with. It seems entirely plausible that the locks of hair – Celeste’s or someone else’s – were sent out with the intention that they would be used as a focus for someone casting _scry,_ and that they would then yield this one, set vision of Celeste in a barred room.

A multitude of problems remain with this hypothesis, of course. The illusion becomes less convincing once it is determined to be identical – either the caster did not care, or did not anticipate that anyone would _scry_ multiple times or multiple locks of hair. I have only the vaguest idea of how the illusion could be formed, and only a chain of reasoning to suggest it’s possible in the first place. How does the illusion of Celeste aid in any way that either a genuine lock of her hair or no hair at all would not? A genuine lock would provide more convincing proof that she is alive and in the opponent’s power; no lock provides no easy opening for divination magic and is arguably more menacing, although I suppose it carries the risk of the missive being discounted as a threat.

Moreover, when Celeste’s appearance in the _dream_ is taken into account, matters only become more confusing. I did not use the lock of hair to target her; if the _scry_ vision was manufactured, _dream_ should not have run into the same trap. Was our opponent prepared for something of that kind? Did I mistarget? 

It is also sadly probable, of course, that I am missing something very obvious in favour of spinning increasingly abstract cobwebs.

There is another point to be raised here. Jorran’s letter was enchanted; Harper’s was not. One would assume that the brother with access to divine magic is more likely to find the trap – if I remember Mistress Zhanti’s lectures on the subject correctly, most clerics have access to _detect magic_ and _dispel_.  Did the caster have reason to believe that Jorran would never just _check?_ Is he, for whatever reason, a higher-value target and therefore worth trying to monitor? Perhaps the sensor is really like _clairvoyance_ and has a limited range and time limit, and Jorran was accessible in a way that Harper was not? (Query: Nepotyna).

Is it possible that our opponent was sufficiently well-informed to reason that Harper would bring his letter to me, that I would find the sensor and deal with it, and therefore conclude it wasn’t worth casting the spell in the first place? This seems extremely far-fetched and shaky – not least because if my guess about when he received the letter is correct, it was some weeks before Harper asked me for assistance.

These queries rest on the assumption that it was intentional on the part of our opponent. Perhaps both letters were enchanted by the sender and neither the temporal or spatial limitations of _clairvoyance_ apply. It’s not unreasonable to suppose that the sensor on Harper’s might have been destroyed by the ambient magic of the Underdark… but I am still speculating on severely limited evidence.

Another possible correlation that I should set down for consideration: Jorran serves Waukeen. Like Tyr and Vhaeraun, she is recently returned to her adherents. Unlike them, however, her silence has something to do with the Abyss. I don’t remember the details, whether she was making alliances or an unwilling captive or replaced by an Abyssal impersonator, but surely Jorran must. This seems of possible relevance, given the Abyssal taint on the sensor.

Jorran’s presence, of course, changes my line of enquiry. I had thought that this whole power play was aimed at Harper; unless Jorran is involved and a far more talented actor than he appears, it seems he is also an intended target. By extension, it appears more likely that this is on the family rather than the individual level – a speculation given increased weight by the other major piece of information Jorran shared.

According to him, a messenger came to his office in Arrabar (so, at least a year ago) from a man named Adric. The writer claimed to be the younger half-brother of Harper’s father, born of the wife of a family retainer. He enclosed a charcoal rubbing of a medallion similar to the one Harper’s father habitually wore, apparently as proof of his paternity. It sounded as though Jorran found this fairly convincing; however, his response was to politely dismiss the writer and his claims on the family estate. Jorran states he never even saw the messenger and has no idea where his response might have been delivered.

I know little enough about how inheritance works among the non-wizardly Thayan nobility, let alone out here… but it does not seem implausible that this Adric might have felt himself the rightful heir to the birthright or whatever there is to claim (the question of whether it is worth claiming remains; Harper implied that there was less wealth than previously). On being dismissed by Jorran, Adric might then have decided upon more forceful means to secure what he felt was his due.

That would, of course, make him the prime candidate for the wielder of Abyssal magic and the person who is using Celeste as bait, if matters were assumed to be connected in the most simple way possible – a large and completely unjustified assumption on the slender evidence we have at present.

There are so many questions, with precious few avenues to find answers and what feels like even less time.

When Katy had finished castigating Jorran for the way he had handled Adric’s letter – or, to be more accurate, when Harper called an end to it – we withdrew to discuss the situation. Harper looked rather like Memna used to when Mistress Aneth-ke called on her: braced for a storm of questions she couldn’t answer, with a certainty of pain to follow.

I… tried. I asked him non-specific questions, the way Mistress Kharzura used to ask me when I was rambling or thinking aloud instead of presenting a logical, connected argument – not so much questions, really, but a list of subjects and a request to tell me what he could about them. I don’t think he found it particularly helpful.

The proper story, as far as I could reconstruct it from what he volunteered and from what he answered Katy, seems to be something like this:

His family name is correctly Ferryman. Taliesin is either genuinely his name, or one he adopted early enough that his estranged brother calls him by it. The family was “at one point” very wealthy and of sufficient social standing that they were expected – at least by the Ferryman patriarch – to meet certain duties and expectations. The eldest brother would inherit the estate and position; the second was regarded as insurance if anything happened to the heir; Jorran was intended for the clergy (query: why Waukeen particularly?); and Harper was bound for the Navy. The relationship between Harper and his father seems to have been fairly negative: Harper described him as a “philandering bastard” (a curious epithet, given Harper’s frequenting of brothels), and stated that he would not be displeased to discover that the man had died.

(Query: identification with the crowned vulture? No evidence really, just a suspicion. Also raises questions about ocean-eyed serpent, which was clearly subject to the vulture… sequence of events would make sense if Harper had not stated they were all people)

At one point in his Naval service, he was posted to the city where Celeste was being raised by other relatives. Her existence was not discussed during his childhood, but it was not a secret. He met Celeste and became emotionally attached. He had hoped and intended to take her to Arrabar and “her rightful place” (query: social expectations or inheritance laws as affect female vs male?).

The Ferryman patriarch became ill and Harper was summoned back to Arrabar. He became vaguer at this point in his narrative, glossing over exact events in favour of describing outcomes. I recognise the technique: I’ve done much the same when I don’t wish to speak of something but don’t care to lie. 

Harper said “the house had fallen into some disrepair”, which may be literal but sounded as though the estate had been mismanaged while his father was ill. Katy guessed that the heir was “an asshole” and the spare was “kind of useless”, which Harper acknowledged as fairly accurate descriptions. He attempted to fix matters for some time, but without success.

He barely spoke of the events that followed, but I believe I would not be over-reaching if I linked “some violence” and Harper’s unwilling departure from Arrabar, with what Harper told me the first time he spoke of his past. He said that he was the youngest of four brothers and that two of them were dead. When I framed the matter in terms of a power-struggle, he did not confirm it was accurate, but neither did he deny it. It seems to confirm my tentative conclusion that he killed them – although, of course, Harper did not say as much.

So Harper’s father was still ill when he was exiled, and Jorran was “left in charge” (query: the heir, if inheritance passes to the oldest surviving offspring? Probably not mutually exclusive with his vocation; the goddess of merchants and trade presumably encourages landed and wealthy adherents). It does raise the question of why Jorran should resent Harper, however, since his actions were probably what placed him in that position to begin with. Indeed, at home I would suspect Jorran to have manipulated Harper and events to exactly that end. Here, however…

Well, appearances are often deceiving, and I haven’t yet tested _detect thoughts_ on Jorran (is he protected as Harper is? If so, probably good news under these circumstances, since we have _no idea_ about the capacities of our opponent; if not, definitely good). I will say, however, he doesn’t seem the type. He may, in fact, be nothing more than what Nebastis pretended to be during our alliance – a scholar of sufficient intelligence to be valuable, but lacking the ruthlessness or guile to survive without a _kvaleth'_ s protection.

I don’t have enough information to speculate, or to complete a proper assessment, but I will note that the physical resemblance between him and Harper is slight. He does have a scholar’s hands – I recognised the shine where the pen rests – and if he has weapon training, I saw no evidence of it. He is ready to advertise his affiliation to his deity, and assumes rank. He addressed Shay as “sister” – my best guess is that he could sense the touch of Yurtrus upon her. Harper compared him to me, and I will admit in some ways it’s a fair criticism; he seems to struggle with the same logistics that were so alien to me when I first left the Academy. However, he is aware he lacks experience in dealing with the world, and chooses not to amend it… I don’t comprehend that kind of wilful stupidity.

How is it that he never once _checked_ that letter? Is he naïve, or arrogant, or is there some aspect of clerical magic I am just missing – some quirk of etiquette or training or the fact he has to beg a deity for spells instead of studying them for himself like a rational person?

I intend to speak to him about this, and about other questions that occur – Waukeen, his bodyguard and her capabilities, etc – as well as asking him for his perspective on Harper’s exile. If he’ll share it, I suspect it’ll fill most of the holes and deal with the suppositions. I think a different approach to that I use with the others is called for – ‘fellow scholar’, perhaps. I remain doubtful whether I should tell him of my affiliation. If he was so disgusted by the mere mention of Skullport, it seems likely he’d baulk at working with a Red Wizard… but I suspect Katy would drop that fact as casually as she mentioned my tome to Jarnath, it may prove of use, and it would probably be messier to deal with if he learned it later, under less controlled conditions.

I have even less information on Jorran’s bodyguard, Nepotyna. She carries herself like a seasoned fighter, and has the scars and calluses of one. Waukeen’s golden coin is tattooed on her neck, which suggests she is connected with the clergy. She defers to Jorran, at one point pulling out his chair for him, which would tend to confirm it. Probably they know each other well; there was considerable non-verbal communication between them. She’ll follow his lead, unless she is much more talented actress than I have good reason to suspect at present.

Shay has retired; Harper and Katy are talking in a manner that suggests they’ve completely forgotten I’m here. I have been withdrawn, thinking and writing while they discuss developments and emotions (it occurs to me that this would be the second time in recent days that I’ve been openly eavesdropping on relationships that do not directly concern me. In a curious recursion, part of this conversation was dedicated to Harper wondering if he had been too hard on Shay during the last one).

I have written Harper lists of what we know, what our opponent can be presumed to know, queries, questions for Jorran and a brief list of information Jorran should be given. I suspect he’ll make as much use of it as he will that book I gave him… but it’s done.

A pity neither those lists nor this entry were sufficiently engrossing to completely block out Katy’s concerns over Harper’s lack of sexual activity, or Harper suggesting she turn her attention to finding me “some nice bald individual to set on fire”.

Hilarious.


	13. Codex #13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khem talks to a lot of people, with mixed results:  
> \- Jorran doesn't spill the beans, and apparently likes shoes.  
> \- Khem spills her guts to the Thayan Ambassador and gains two teleportation sequences of dubious value.  
> \- Harper seems unconvinced by what Khem has to say.  
> \- Shay is not reassured.

Once Katy tired, I gave Harper my lists. As expected, he only glanced at them once before shoving them in his pockets. We briefly discussed what needed to be done; he intends to speak with his brother, and anticipated that I would also wish to question Jorran. I do, and on several subjects… but Harper’s one of them, of course. He knew I’d ask, I knew that he knew me well enough to know I would, and so we had a cordial little balance of knowledge. It’s rare to hear it stated so explicitly, though, and it was in some measure reassuring – that I would not be trespassing or breaching the parameters of our alliance too far, that I had permission to ask.

It’s possible, given how he spoke to Katy, that he would be relieved if Jorran did divulge the exact series of events that led to Harper’s exile from Arrabar; I would know and cease pressing him on the subject without ever forcing him to put words around it.

He told me not to worry about him, to instead focus my attention on protecting myself and the others; that he didn’t expect sacrifices on his behalf, “it’s not worth it”. This… concerned me, but I told him I would consider it. He asked, also, that if the situation appeared irredeemable, I would get the others out and leave him behind. I agreed, but reluctantly. I don’t intend to allow matters to come to such a pass, but it’s always as well to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. It takes so little to lose control of a situation.  

He smiled when I agreed, as he had when Katy and I agreed to help him. Only then did I recognise it – well, not the expression exactly, but what it represents. I will think about this, and how to address it. If there is anything I could possibly say or do that would not simply make matters worse…

…I dreamed a tree. Its branches reached to the sky, grasping the storm-clouds like crooked, greedy hands. Lightning illuminated the white blossoms and danced among the leaves. Golden paving-stones gleamed in a perfect, unbroken circle around the tree. Three were stained with blood. One reflected a small songbird. It darted from one branch to another, shining like starlight, but hampered by the grey ribbon that trailed from its leg. A reflection only. We approached the tree – the Thirsty, the Erratic, the Silent, and I. The tree’s roots broke up through the paving stones, thick, viciously thorned and blindingly fast. In less than a breath, we were caught, pierced, and torn apart.

 _Please_. I knew that already…

Today was… difficult, but certainly not unproductive.

Katy harangued me over breakfast. As she does on so many other topics, she has strong opinions about the brown hooded robe I wear to cover my tattoos and my affiliations. Apparently it looks like I cut holes in a discarded potato sack and then pulled it over my head, which is only done by the destitute and those who are trying desperately to look inconspicuous. Her tirade was amusing to begin with, but the crowning touch was Harper’s chagrin. He kept trying to silence her, apparently on the assumption that she was being rude or that I would be offended. Eventually I gave her permission to find me something suitable. I have no idea whether she’ll pay any attention to the parameters I gave her or whether it will end up being something I can use, but it made her happy.

I suspect she met with no success; at any rate, she didn’t mention it this evening. It’s probably just as well.

Harper appeared somewhat unsettled after speaking in private with his brother, and it seemed he had found Jorran less than forthcoming. I went up to try my hand at the matter.

Results were mixed. I spoke entirely with Jorran, although Nepotyna was there. To borrow his own words, he only dabbles in scholarship but remains more a scholar than a priest. It’s difficult to tell without seeing him in the field, but from our discussion it seems a fair assessment. His studies are unfocused and undisciplined, a scattering of obscure fragments of architecture, history, poetry, philosophy and Waukeenar dogma. When I asked about his clerical magic, he said he was capable of preventing harm and healing wounds, but claimed no more. He denied the capacity to check his letter with _detect magic._ I asked specifically about _zone of truth,_ which I had understood was not a particularly difficult manifestation of divine magic to invoke; Jorran said he was not sufficiently skilled to cast it.

It was rather a setback to the way I’d intended to conduct the conversation. Nevertheless, I pulled my hood back and let him see I was a Red Wizard. It seemed safer that he learn it directly from me and under controlled circumstances. While he went a little pale, he quickly realised the potential benefits of working with something like me. I explained exactly what we had learned since Harper had brought the lock of hair to me, and how; he seemed to keep up reasonably well with the arcane technicalities, which made a pleasant change.

I asked about Harper’s past, of course. Jorran’s refusal was a confusingly mixed simile which took some sorting through: “Taliesin is my brother, and whatever bitter waters may have flowed under the bridge of our fraternal relationship, I would prefer not to speak ill of him when he is not here to defend himself.” He also assured me that whatever version of events Harper gave me would be the truth.

So. Either he really believes that, or else he has chosen to be loyal to his brother – refusing to risk contradicting him in front of the Red Wizard. It doesn’t much matter which, as neither got me the confirmation I was seeking, and both are… indicative. Reassuring, I suppose; whatever resentment or difficulty there is between them, Jorran is at least willing to give the appearance of cohesion. One can go far with that much, perhaps even far enough…

Nevertheless, I was, and am, convinced that I should attempt to cultivate Jorran. It’s clear that there is unresolved tension between him and Harper, although he still looks to Harper for guidance first. Katy appears to taken a dislike to him, and she has always lacked subtlety. In some ways Shay would be the best choice, I think; they have divine interference in common, Jorran called her ‘sister’ and appeared to approve of her, and Shay is very easy company. However, she shows no inclination to address Jorran, even when I suggested it (I am getting ahead of myself). I… well. I am a Red Wizard, which does not engender confidence, of course, but I am able to ask intelligent and engaging questions about his pet topics, I am the source of most of what information we have gathered on Arrabar – which demonstrates good will in the matter, however sceptical one chooses to be about my motives – and I can easily play the part of one curious about his faith. I’ve never yet met a priest (excepting possibly Jarnath) who would not preach at great length about his deity on the slightest of encouragement.

Possibly it will prove a moot point, given how short time has become, but it doesn’t hurt to lay the foundations.

I’ve already asked him about Waukeen. He _had_ requested guidance from her since receiving the presumed lock of Celeste’s hair, but hadn’t been able to make much of it. When I persuaded him to recount some of it, I wasn’t surprised; a more confusing mess of imagery I’ve rarely encountered. I also questioned him about Waukeen’s sojourn in the Abyss and her return. It didn’t add much that I didn’t already know, but it wasn’t a wasted enquiry. It’s useful to hear the official narrative, and his fervour on the subject seems genuine. He didn’t think much of my suggestion that there might be a link between the Abyssal flavour of that spell-sensor, his affiliation with Waukeen, and Waukeen’s Abyss detainment. To be honest, it seems rather far-fetched to me as well, but recent events have taught me not to automatically dismiss the possibility.

I found a reasonable opportunity to cast _detect thoughts_ on him, as intended. His mind was open – he was thinking of Harper, of Celeste, and of shoes. One of these things seems rather unlike the others. Nepotyna, conversely, was transparent to the spell. Another reason why she merits close observation.

Well, when it seemed we had reached the natural end of the conversation, we went out to explore the teleportation services offered by the Mages’ Guild and by Miresk’s School of Thaumaturgy.

The Mages’ Guild operates a free service, but requires bookings – including for emergency incoming traffic, which suggests they don’t really understand the concept of emergencies. I was able to copy down sigil sequences for the three circles nearest to Arrabar. None were very close.

On the way to the School, we stopped by the Silver Hall, where Harper reported the gnoll attacks on the road to the person in charge.  We also stopped by… well. I don’t even know how to explain it. Stables, run on an obviously insufficient income stream for the benefit of unprofitable horses and donkeys, by an elf who encouraged the saccharine nonsense with which Katy addresses her horse. Katy intended to board the animal with him, as sea travel to Arrabar appeared inevitable at that point.

The way they were both cooing over the horse was nauseating enough, but it got worse. The elf was obviously signalling sexual interest in Katy. Katy was obviously living up to her stated intention of arranging a tryst for Harper. Harper was obviously enjoying every aspect of the situation. Shay and Nepotyna were obviously bored. Jorran was _very_ obviously the one witness who was less comfortable than me.

It’s mostly why I didn’t simply walk away. At this stage, I’ll take every scrap of information or indication of character I can glean, any possible point of leverage. It wasn’t too hard to tune it out; I wasn’t required to participate. It wasn’t aimed at me.

And there was one shining moment in all of it, the sort of thing that would never have happened at home.

The elf told Harper how charming his daughter was.

Katy was outraged, and insisted that they were not related – _obviously_ not related, since she is a half-elf and Harper is human.

There was a long silence as everyone marvelled at Katy’s grasp of mathematics and biology, and all decided not to say anything. Even me. I would never have imagined ignorance could be so comical. It would never have previously occurred to me to value that, to enjoy it instead of simply dispelling it.

Still. As her teacher, I should probably have a word with her - but if she requires any greater detail on the specifics of elven and human reproduction, I’m sending her to Harper.

When eventually we escaped from that mess, we made our way to Miresk’s School of Thaumaturgy – the first school of magic I’ve seen outside Thay. The students milled around without apparent aim, and only a few of them hurried through the corridors. It spoke of an easier pace – as though learning had no urgency and no purpose other than idle curiosity. It was, in short, almost everything that perplexes me about people outside Thay overlaid on something that should have been familiar.

It is, apparently, exactly how Katy always envisaged a school of magic, which explains a great deal about some of her reactions when I told her about my Academy. I made some comment about how different it was, to which Harper responded with that disconcerting mixture of acid and insight: “What, not quite enough students lashed to the walls receiving brand marks to their faces for misspeaking their spells?”

Well, that wasn’t necessary to give the school a touch of home. A woman in that kind of reinforced robes Mistress Zhanti favoured – the chainmail and robes of a battlemage or spellblade who expects to be on the front lines of a conflict – approached me and asked for me by name. I was expected, she said, by Master Drax.

Thari Drax, of course, is the Thayan Ambassador to Silverymoon, and recommended to me as a potential contact by Anishta Daraam, the Ambassador to Waterdeep. What this says about their relative power or positioning is difficult to determine, except that they are technically of the same rank and may therefore be assumed to be operating as peers.

The fact that I was asked for by name and expected was bad enough, but then Katy - in the middle of a crowded room with people coming and going – asked if it was ‘a Red Wizard thing’. I worry about how stupid and careless I have become, but Katy is always there to show me how much worse I could get.

Needless to say, I was not at all displeased when Jorran expressed a preference for the library and Harper took Katy to the school shop. Shay and I ascended the stairs and found Master Drax with some others; we withdrew under the guise of ‘business from the castle’ and entered into very much the sort of conversation that could be expected. I asked how I could be of use to him, he suggested that he could help me with whatever Daraam had sent me to achieve in Silverymoon.

She’d given me no particular task here, only suggested that Drax would be a valuable contact and powerful ally if I could get him on-side, and expressed an interest in learning a sigil sequence for Silverymoon. So I asked after that, and Drax chuckled to himself. Apparently he considers it a sign of unabated ambition on her part (territorial concerns? Silverymoon of higher prestige or better opportunities than Waterdeep? Personal rivalry? He did speak as though he was familiar with her, although she looks somewhat younger. Then again, she also has demonstrated a penchant for the casual use of illusion; she may appear as she chooses. Why blue eyes?). When he asked why I thought she might want it, I was unable to offer anything beyond what may be assumed by any Red Wizard with a semi-functional brain… except the lacunae in communication I had noted between the Waterdeep Embassy and the Skullport Enclave.

That did arouse his interest. Although I cannot be certain, I believe it was genuinely new information to him, not merely confirmation of what he already knew or suspected. I asked what my elaboration on the matter was worth to him.

He said I would be permitted to remain upright and breathing – phrased as a jest, but of course it’s always a concern with members of the order – and pointed out that he could share the information I sought or more, that he had the ear of the High Mage of Silverymoon and was a useful person to cultivate. All of which was true, but unsurprisingly nebulous – he is in a position of power, and he has no real reason to extend its benefits to me. If I shared what I knew he might do so, if it pleased him or served his objectives; refusal would likely be unpleasant.

In any case, there is little enough that I know that could not be gained from other sources… I gave him what he requested, a succinct account of my dealings with Embassy and Enclave, and the information I had observed Daraam to lack.  I told him how Eshmira Abbar had defeated Metoth Zurn and risen to lead the Skullport Enclave. He noticed what Daraam had not; that this was the official narrative and I could say something more about it if I chose.

This suggested that he was probably Daraam’s superior in these matters and it would be safer to make some acknowledgement of that assessment – to imply I would serve his interests rather than hers if they came into conflict. I had the truth of Zurn’s elimination to use towards that end, which was not so easily weighed. I had a little information on where he and Daraam stand in relation to each other; almost nothing on where Eshmira Abbar fits in the tangle. I’m already marked in Abbar’s mind as unusually slow to read inferences or to take a hint; if she concludes that I am also indiscreet, I prove myself an untenable liability.

Probably. If she were truly concerned about me telling others about what I’d witnessed, surely she would have removed me at the time. I possess neither the skill nor the significance for it to pose much difficulty for her.

I don’t know whether I found whatever my dreams sent me to Skullport to seek, and so it would be unwise to make the area inhospitable. On the other hand, I also have no evidence to suggest I _need_ to return there, and no real ties [ _The word ‘Twitch’ has been struck from the text]_. I do intend to return to Silverymoon and thence to Sundabar in the future. Technically I needed nothing from Drax except the small measure of tolerance necessary for survival – he had more to offer, certainly, but no promises that he’d give me anything, and what fool would trust a Red Wizard’s promise anyway? Still. If Abbar leaves her secrets in my hands, they’re mine to do with as I choose (the consequences are also mine to take) – and I had a sense that they were more valuable spent here than hoarded against her good opinion.

So, decorated with Abbar’s convenient little fiction of ‘hallucinations’, I told him the truth, right down to the details of where I had seen Ahmryr Yhauntyr again and learned his name. That, too, appeared to be new and valuable information to Drax, although he was trying to hide his reaction. He asked, also, whether I’d told Daraam of this, and was pleased – even complimentary – when I told him I’d seen no reason to burden her with my unfortunate infirmity.

Drax gave me a sigil sequence that he claims links to an unofficial site of the Mages’ Guild. I have no idea whether that’s true, and I don’t much care. I had no intention of using it, even before he warned me to let considerable time lapse between giving it to Daraam and going through myself.

He also asked what I planned to do next. I demurred, given that the situation in Arrabar is not mine to betray and is probably sufficiently complicated without further Red Wizard involvement. No. I attempted to demur. I allowed myself to be coaxed into giving him our destination and a handful of other useful facts about the situation.  It shouldn’t have happened. He gave me, in return, a sigil sequence - apparently for the town of New Breen, which is about a day from Arrabar. I am _inclined_ to believe it genuine. I spilled practically everything to Drax, which makes me the sort of tool you use until it breaks.

So in exchange for some information which was dangerous to share and some which was not mine to give, I learned one sigil sequence I won’t use and one which is a gamble. I also established myself as a nishkir of dubious discretion, but one who has apparently decided he’s stronger than Daraam or Abbar. I suppose only time will tell whether I’ve played this hand to advantage or made yet another mistake.

Back to basics, Khem. Any day you survive is a victory.

Once Drax dismissed us, we found Jorran and Nepotyna. I encouraged Jorran to talk about what he’d read in the library – treatises on magical bridge-building, philosophy, and religious fundraising, apparently. It might be difficult material to make intelligent conversation from, but fortunately there’s little need; he’s happy enough with a willing listener and the occasional prompt. He did break out of it long enough to attempt to lecture Shay on her drinking habits – apparently he’s seen such ‘vice’ and ‘self-medication’ before and feels there are better alternatives for ‘masking your suffering’.

He must have been raised very differently from Harper… no, that’s an unwarranted leap of logic. There’s no way of telling which attitude – if either – represents a base state against which the other is rebelling.

After finding Harper and Katy, we spoke to the dean of teleportation (apparently a closer Common translation for the instructor of a subject than mistress or master). She could offer us nothing closer to Arrabar, but did permit me to copy a sigil sequence for the main square of Silverymoon. That seems like a much safer alternative for emergencies than the Mages’ Guild and their booking system.

We returned to the inn, with the intention of there discussing our plans. Katy went to the stables to snuggle with her horse, but the rest of us gathered in Harper’s room. I required his prompting to put up protections against eavesdropping. I have no understanding or excuses. When I tried…

I was blocked. I could feel the Weave responding as I shaped _Leomund’s tiny hut_ , but when I loosed it, it warped. All I got was a quill, a pot of ink, and a sheaf of forms demanding which spell I attempting to cast and my justification for doing so. _Blocked!_ Khaseth stilled my hands and covered my eyes and would have disembowelled me if he hadn’t been such an idiot as to allow his proclivities to run roughshod over his objective - but the magic was still there. Not like that.

I had some stupid theory that the School of Thaumaturgy was responsible – that this might be how they handled visitors and particularly moronic pupils – but I had no way to handle it. Nor was I… composed. It required Jorran’s assistance to identify the culprit – the ring of wizardry that we’d been given by the Reforged Ring in Skullport was _cursed_. He lost himself in tinkering with it, Shay went downstairs to drink, I successfully called a cantrip without the ring on my finger, Harper and I adjourned to my room to discuss some matters.

It wasn’t how I’d intended to broach any of them – I’d planned to cast _dream_ on him. In some ways, I admit, it would be a waste of spell-energy. If we’re at New Breen tomorrow it’s almost too late to get any useful information from Celeste, assuming I could reach her, which was the main point of tinkering with _dream_ in the first place. It’s a moot point now. There’s no way I’m trying to approach Harper’s mind when he’s been amusing himself with that elf from the stables. There are some things I simply do not want to see.

He did apologise for organising his tryst while I had to witness it. I said that it had not been uninformative, and that we had all heard worse. True enough, although I don’t think he understood that I was referring to gauging Jorran’s behaviour, and I wasn’t about to clarify the point in front of Jorran. I’m afraid I eroded the position I’ve been so carefully establishing, judging by the way Harper smiled…

Well. I warned Harper about Nepotyna and the silence of her mind, and told him of the tendency of Jorran’s thoughts. He was a little displeased that I had eavesdropped on his brother, but not overscrupulous on the matter. I also mentioned the theory I’d been considering: that Jorran had manipulated Harper into disposing of their two elder brothers and was now responsible for the situation with Celeste. He didn’t think much of it; he’s inclined to believe Jorran’s concern for their sister genuine. I’m inclined to accept his judgement on the matter – although I don’t forget Harper hasn’t seen Jorran in some time, and I will keep the possibility in the back of my mind.

Those were the simple matters. The harder one… I asked Harper why he was so convinced he wasn’t going to survive.

Because that was it, of course. That’s what coloured the way he smiled at Katy and at me when we offered to help; that’s what haunts the way he carries himself and the way he’s been preparing for Arrabar. He believes the odds are overwhelmingly against us, and although he’s determined to fight to his last breath for what he wants, he realises he may very well die in the process. Even if I hadn’t known that icy resignation myself when I left to tell Metoth Zurn that his prize was lost by my hand – and on other occasions – he isn’t the first time I’ve seen it.

So I… addressed it. There was the tactical side, of course. If he had some knowledge that led him to believe the situation so desperate, then it needed to be shared and the eventuality planned for; if he was only afraid, then the fear could be calmed.  But the tactics weren’t really at the forefront of my mind.

He asked why I even cared. If he was prepared to die it was because he believed the cause worth it, and his death should hardly affect my safety or that of the others – in short, it wasn’t my business how he chose to conduct himself. He was… well. He sounded very similar to the way he did when he was lecturing Shay about her perceived selfishness. Which was something I was trying very hard to avoid – it wasn’t at all about me, but about him and his goal…

I apologised, and I told him I was concerned for him. He told me he could take care of himself. I’ve never doubted his capability, but I was – _am_ – questioning his will. I don’t believe he’ll really fight for himself.

I will.

He asked what answer I wanted him to give, what he could do or say to put my mind at ease. I wasn’t there to be soothed or placated, as Harper so capably manages Katy, Shay, or about ninety-five percent of our encounters; I was there to… because I cared.

But, of course, being myself, I could not find the words to say anything useful. I don’t have the vocabulary for these matters – I’ve barely recognised or acknowledged that I do care, I haven’t had time to learn how to talk about it or how to help. All I could do was tell him the basic, inane calculations that he despises: that he was not disposable, that he was valued.

He was silent for a long time, staring at me with a faceful of changing expressions I wasn’t sure how to read. What he said eventually was that he appreciated what I’d said and the effort it must have cost me, he wasn’t sure how to respond but he would consider the matter. The usual careful, diplomatic words he uses when he thinks I am being obtuse and Red Wizardly and he’s trying not to offend. I’m sure I only made matters worse when I told him I was at his disposal for anything he wished to say and didn’t want the others to hear or have to deal with; even to my ears, it sounded like I was trying to pry more information out of him.

I suppose I am. No. I _know_ I am. It’s as much a part of what I am as my magic or my tattoos, possibly even more. It’s just not as… pure a motive as it used to be – it’s all tainted with fear for him.

I told him about my conversation with Jorran, and how his brother refused to speak of his secrets. Whatever lies between them is a weakness in this battle we go to fight – Harper has confirmed as much, and he will try to guard it - but it goes against the grain to leave an acknowledged weakness ready to be exploited. I wonder if it’s worth addressing Jorran on this matter…

I asked him also about the dream I’d recounted for him – the masked ash-rabbit, the ash-storm, the hunters, the crowned vulture and the ocean-eyed serpent. I asked, because it seemed important, whether we were likely to encounter any of the people represented by those figures. Harper thought it possible, and spoke of his father. This strengthens my tentative identification of his father with the crowned vulture, although there remains no real evidence. I asked him if he would be ready to face them.

He said it didn’t matter if he was ready: we weren’t going to Arrabar to resolve his past or his emotions on the subject, we were going for Celeste, and we needed to be entirely focused on her. He sees her as the only thing that matters in this situation.

That part isn’t remotely true, and I very nearly said so. I can’t really speak for Katy or Shay, of course, but I believe they’d echo me on this: we’re here for him, not for Celeste. It didn’t seem wise to tell him I wasn’t particularly committed to his primary objective.

I don’t think he’d care to hear that I’d sacrifice her to protect him.

After he left, I informed Katy she didn’t have to part from her horse and dodged away before she could slosh her enthusiasm all over me. I found Shay in the inn’s main room with her ale, and sat down to speak with her. She was rather troubled over the dream Yurtus had sent her the previous night. We were gathered around a breakfast table. Harper had bone-white hands again, and when he reached out to take an apple, it rotted under his touch. When Shay touched it, however, the decay reversed itself and the fruit became whole and healthy again. She wasn’t clear whether her hands were white at that time; she also cannot remember whether she has ever dreamt Katy or me with white hands.

She wanted me to interpret it for her. I speculated – growth and decay, undoing what was done, etc – but was unable to give her much. I did point out that Yurtrus would be the third deity in recent times to display some sort of interest in Harper. There were dreams of Tyr, a direct encounter with Vhaeraun, and now Yurtrus. I wouldn’t dismiss Waukeen, either, even if I have nothing except Jorran’s presence to count as her involvement. I suggested Shay speak to the cleric about it. However poor a priest he claims to be, surely he knows more about this sort of thing than I, and he’s already offered… Shay was reluctant, although I’m not sure if it’s because she considers this private or she was insulted by Jorran’s comment on her alcohol consumption.

I know. It’s ridiculous that I should be approached by my wastet-le with a problem and that I should then send her onto a stranger. But I simply don’t know enough to help her…

…fish of all colours, swarming in a too-small bowl. The water is murky, polluted and threaded with blood. The bowl is shaken in rough wild hands. Faces peer in the top of the bowl. Their eyes are childish in their simplicity, knowing no sorrow or depth. There are dead fish among us, I know them when we brush length to length. There is no clear water, you’re always touching someone. Hands of all colours – gold and brown and peach and black and blue and grey and bloody - thrust into the bowl. Some grab fish and yank them out. We can hear them drown and dry and die. Others squash fish against the side, searching for one of us in the tangle. Some throw more fish into the bowl. There’s no room for them. One hand touches a fish. It screams in every scale as it becomes a dragon. The bowl breaks around it. We die in the choking air…

… that one again. I didn’t find the recurring, although I know they were there somewhere and I have previously...

I’ll cast the spell for New Breen this morning.


	14. Codex #14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the road to Arrabar, Khem crosses a line.

[Half a page is covered with a stream of curse words so colourful and intricately descriptive our translator gave up; it is captioned only as ‘the writer is furious with herself’. On the facing page is a rough illustration – apparently not bearing an encryption – of a sandy beach framed by a stone archway. A tall tree with white flowers scatters their petals on the breeze. Three figures are beyond it – two men and a girl near the shoreline, heads downcast. The next encryption is coded to a combination of the Thayan symbol for ‘irredeemable error’, the Infernal for ‘destruction’ and the Draconic for ‘idiocy’]

He… he was _crying_ , and I did that. My ridiculous unfounded arrogance… I should have known – I _did_ know that wound was not something I should have tried to touch. Even if I ever possessed any power to heal instead of to dissect and question and break…

Order. Back to the beginning.

I took us through the teleportation sigil Master Drax had provided. Neither Harper nor Jorran commented; it appears it genuinely did go to New Breen. We emerged on a rotting dock in a damp little squat surrounded by peasants. They were understandably concerned by the sudden appearance of an armed party in their midst; Harper calmed their fears before matters turned confrontational. They told him that there has been no word out of Arrabar for six months. ‘Strange omens’ started appearing more recently. Some of them – missing cows, torn fishing nets, sudden deaths – seem natural enough, but others, like the lights in the sky, the coloured fogs and the unfamiliar plants (particularly after later events), sounded like genuine manifestations of uncontrolled power. Or power turned to strange ends. Not necessarily Abyssal, but what do I know of the Infinite Abyss? What can any mortal truly know?

After Jorran had finished appeasing the peasants’ superstitions with Waukeenar blessings, we rode on. The land seemed pleasant enough, except for the thorned roots that grew from the ground at odd intervals and snaked over the road. They are apparently not native to the area, according to Harper and Jorran; nor did Shay recognise them from her studies. They look disconcertingly like the ones I dreamed two night ago, which killed us, and they emanate ambient magic with a faint Abyssal taint. It reminds me of nothing so much as the Underdark _faerzress_. (Query: transformative/invasive, creating favourable environment? Manifestation? Cause or effect?) Jorran was also of the opinion that they were ‘unpleasant, unholy’, which might well be how a cleric senses Abyssal magic.

We came upon a band of trolls and an ettin. They had been fighting each other until we arrived on the scene, but quickly turned their attention to us. A _fireball_ usually has that effect. It was not a difficult confrontation. Despite his disavowal of the relevant experience, Jorran performed adequately and within the parameters he’d described. Nepotyna appears to be a swift and skilled combatant, as far as I can judge a melee fighter; certainly she would require careful handling if we found ourselves in opposition.

Jorran looked rather greenish afterwards, which might have been due to the combat itself or to Shay’s usual dissection of the corpses. I explained that she was a botanist and biologist (which, to be fair, is inaccurate; she is a thanatologist); he was of the opinion that whatever she was doing, it was not _science._ Not as it’s practised in these softer lands, perhaps.

We rode on until we were within a few hours of Arrabar, then made camp. Nobody wished to enter our opponent’s stronghold unprepared or without all our resources. Harper and Jorran withdrew to discuss… well, whatever they were discussing, but they did not appear any easier with each other at its conclusion. Jorran joined us at the campfire, where Shay was cooking, and Harper went off to interrogate Nepotyna.

Jorran asked Shay about her affiliation with the Long Death. I found this somewhat concerning; either she gave herself away in some manner I didn’t notice, or else Harper told him. Now, there’s not a lot of harm in him knowing, as far as I can see; the Long Death’s reputation makes them unwelcome in many lands, but not to the degree the Red Wizards are. What concerns me is the possibility that Harper has grown either careless or malicious with information that isn’t his to share. The former is more likely, particularly given how emotionally charged this whole situation is for him, and I haven’t any real evidence for the latter; I mention it only for completeness’s sake.

Jorran and Shay also spoke on the subject of her god. Apparently it’s unusual – even enviable – that Shay should be receiving dreams from him. Despite his obvious eagerness to hear more, and my suggestion that she ask him – Shay kept her own counsel on the exact content of those dreams. I don’t think it’s the decision I would have made under the same circumstances, but it might have been wise. When Jorran coaxed the name of her god from her, he stared at her in obvious disapproval. He said that Yurtrus has a reputation for great cruelty, for obscurity of purpose, and for using and discarding his followers at need. He stressed the need for caution in dealing with such an entity, which made me laugh. You might as well teach a Thayan how to breathe – one’s as necessary for basic survival as the other.

I got Jorran talking – perilously easy to do – on the subject of his history, early training, and the physical layout of Arrabar. It explained a great deal about his skills and interests, and raised more about the nature of people out here.  He went to the clerics at the age of _fifteen_ \- how do they expect to achieve excellence if they start so late? By fifteen I had begun specialisation and eliminated five other students…

Listening to him is a very slow way to build rapport, if indeed it’s having any measurable effect at all. I suspect he’d give a complete accounting of himself to a stone wall, and you wouldn’t even need to paint an ear on it first. It’s possible that if I’d wanted to really cultivate him, I shouldn’t have begun by revealing myself as a Red Wizard… but in a situation like this I’ll take an honest distrust over a manipulation based on a deception that Katy can destroy with one word. Or Harper, I suppose, since he’s been less than discreet about Shay. In any case, I probably threw away any ground I might have gained when I asked him if he and Harper had resolved their differences.

I was terribly blunt. I told him that whatever was between them was like a gaping wound: bleeding, an obvious weakness, the sort of thing any non-lobotomised opponent would see and exploit. You don’t go into combat with that sort of vulnerability if it can be avoided - not only for their sake and that of their objective, but for ours as well. He and Harper had at least a handful of hours to fix it before we could reach Arrabar. Jorran basically brushed me off – I had no cause to worry, they could put their problems behind them, my concern was appreciated – a group of platitudes which amounted to a polite request for me to stop intruding in something that was none of my business.

So that was my first failure of the evening.

The second was worse.

I cast _dream_ on Harper. He’d given me permission, and I thought – blind, arrogant idiot that I am – well, I thought I could help. He is, apparently, much troubled by nightmares, and I believed I could use _dream_ to bar them from him for at least one night, to help him settle his mind and rest securely before we walked into our opponent’s trap. It would be disingenuous to claim that I wasn’t curious, of course, but it wasn’t my primary intention.

Or so I believe. I don’t believe in lying to myself, but I can’t pretend my motives are entirely clear at this point.

It’s been a long time since anything really was.

I found myself in a long hallway, a thick, fresh blood trail at my feet. I began to follow it. There were doors and tall windows either side. Not a Thayan building – the walls were some peculiar mixture of stone and plaster, and it was constructed to let in the sunlight. Completely indefensible and all too vulnerable to stray or ill-formed fireballs. Each window showed the exact same view of a garden. It reminded me of the _scry_ of Celeste, but the resemblance may be coincidental.

The blood loss was… extensive. I could almost taste it in the air. It was smeared with stumbling footprints. There were handprints on the walls, where the victim had tried to hold themselves up. A flight, I think, and they’d – hells, why am I trying to be objective? I _know_ whose blood it was -  _he’d_ tried to get out at every single one of them. There were broken lockpicks in the doors, a few with daggers stuck in the hinges as makeshift levers. The windows were smeared with blood. One bore the imprint of a fist – blood had collected in the spiderweb of cracks, but the glass had held.

I wanted to hurry. I didn’t dare. Any detail could be significant, and dreams… they feel real. The pain, the desperation, it shudders in your mind, but it’s all gone when you wake. If he woke before I found him, he’d be no worse than if I’d never intervened, as if I’d never tried. If I missed something he needed, though…

Eventually I came to the end of the hallway, and there Harper was, beside a great stone archway. It emitted light – too brilliant to see beyond, but pitilessly clear in revealing the details of Harper’s state. He was slumped against one of the walls – the blood marks suggested he had slid down it, his strength completely spent. The wound was in his chest, soaking through his clothes, dying the fist he had pressed against it ineffectually.

He knew me. He wasn’t surprised to see me there. I said something idiotic about why I was there instead of the plain truth. It’s indefensible.

He was _not_ bleeding to death. It was a dream. The hallway was already marked with more blood than flows in a human’s veins. If I have dreamt that wound countless nights, it is still only a reflection of a truth - he has survived this long with it and it _is not mortal._ It is never this difficult when the Silent dies, because it’s only my construct and it doesn’t always look like him anyway. It’s never occurred to me to try to heal the Silent – I know I don’t have that power – but I tried to heal Harper.

Of course, nothing happened. I knew even as I tried that nothing would. I don’t have that ability, even in a dreamscape, and that wound was never for me to heal. I knew it even then, but I had to try. I cannot stand being helpless, and I owed him at least that, and I _could not_ just see him bleeding there and do nothing.

He asked me if I was satisfied. With an ally in need, someone I cared about bleeding to death in front of me – _no,_ a dream, a magically-created shared illusion, and I did not experience this difficulty with Katy and Shay – he can’t have meant it seriously.

I told him I wasn’t, anyway. I asked if he was.

He didn’t answer; he only shrugged and resumed staring out the archway. My eyes adjusted, a little; I could see a sandy beach beyond it, and a tall tree with white blossoms. It was… disconcerting. I have dreamt that tree so many years – usually with the Silent, but sometimes with the others. I dreamed it only two nights ago, with the golden paving stones, the storm, the bird, and the thorned roots.

I said something of the kind to Harper. He told me that it was planted in Arrabar by his mother – about whom he has never spoken, and it’s never occurred to me to ask – and that it he finds himself remembering it frequently.

It seemed… clear, then. I couldn’t heal him, but I thought I could improve things by one means or another, so I took a deep breath, reminded myself it was only a dream and I need not consider myself restrained, and offered him my hand, to help him stand.

He just looked at me. Like Memna, again – defeated, resigned. Broken. He didn’t move. He is very… tactile himself, and mostly seems aware that I dislike being touched and rarely reach out physically; I didn’t expect that he’d reject me.

I suppose irony is always bitter.

Harper said we both knew it was just a dream. This one recurs for him, it seems; by the time he cannot stay on his feet, he can wake up. I received the impression that he’s never made it through the archway, but I may be mistaken.

I asked him if he wanted to be somewhere else. If I could not physically (so far as the word applies in a dreamscape) assist him, I could at least try to change it.

He gave me no answer. Through the archway, three figures were visible at the shoreline: two men. one slighter than the other, and a young girl in a dress and a broad-brimmed hat. The distance was too great to make out any real detail, but he admitted it was a memory when I asked – one he valued and tried to retain. That suggests to me a high probability (but not a certainty) that he was one of the men visible. Given other dreams and pieces of context, I’m inclined to tentatively identify the girl with Celeste. It’s not impossible that the other man might match with the lover represented as the ocean-eyed serpent, but I’m aware of my… attachment to the simplest and most direct correlations.

“It’s a dream, right?” he asked. “What harm can it do?”

“It’s a dream,” I told him. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t real.” It’s not daylight logic, or usual causality, but you’ll never see an oneiric diviner quick to dismiss a dream. And, after all, it was what I was there for. I offered him my strength and my hand.

He asked where we’d go, to what end. Again, he made me no movement to accept my help.

I told him through the archway, on the assumption that he wished to witness that memory more closely, that the purpose of his dream was struggling towards it. It occurs to me, as I write, that there may be an inconsistency there. I may have erred or misinterpreted; it would not be the first time. If he wanted to reach the archway and the memory of the beach, the tree, and the people, why would he make so many attempts to escape?

He said it could not end well, and the hallway began to turn ancient and cold around us. The light through the windows went grey, and so did the walls. The plastering fell away and the stone began to crumble. I tried to hold it, but I failed. Whether he was consciously opposing me or not, he’s stronger than he knows in that setting.

I _hated_ it. There he was, still bleeding, longing for another time and another place, which appeared to be within his reach if he’d only let me help him (and I know dreams are frequently deceptive, particularly with things like distance, but I wasn’t _thinking_ in those terms), and instead he was sitting there, passively waiting until he died, the place destroyed itself around us, or he woke. It fit most unpleasantly with the conclusions I’d already reached – that he didn’t believe he’d survive the coming storm, and he wouldn’t fight for himself.

I… accused him of as much, I suppose, and he asked very quietly what I’d like him to do instead.

I told him I wanted to see him fight for himself and for what he wanted.

He said: “You don’t think I’ve done that enough already? I want my sister to be safe, and I want my brother to be protected.” He grew less composed with every word – tired and desperate. “I want Katy to find that home that she craves so much and that family who loves her, and I want Shay to feel safe inside her own skin, and I want you… I want you to want better for yourself. And I don’t really care about me.”

I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t, really. I believe he honestly desires those things because he cares about those people. That is already a stretch for my accustomed thinking, but I can work with it. I can understand why he names those particular goals for his siblings and for Shay. The inclusion of ‘family’ in his wish for Katy makes less sense to me, except in that the one she was born to locked her in a room and denied her the training she needed… and I can make almost nothing of what he wants me to want, beyond assuming that he has not altered his professed opinion that I should leave my order.

And surely he must want something for himself. Surely he cannot be so fatalistic, so lost, and yet persevere.

It didn’t make the situation any less frustrating, but I almost wanted to laugh. A very long time ago I asked him what he wanted. He said, then, that he wanted me to trust him, which wasn’t helpful – this was even less so, but it was, _finally_ , an answer. They were distinct and probably achievable goals that I could help with, that I could be of use in attaining.

Harper told me that it didn’t matter, that none of it did. A window shattered, the shards of glass flying in our direction but remaining well clear. Consciously or subconsciously, it seems, he wasn’t willing to see me come to harm; it certainly wasn’t my doing that it missed.

Almost casually, Harper plucked a thorned vine from the wound in his chest and tossed it aside. Except for its size, it looked identical to the tree roots we’d seen infesting the road to Arrabar. I wasn’t certain of the implications of that, but it changed when it hit the ground. It became a small, black snake.

I have dreamed Harper and the black serpent with ocean eyes on several occasions – enough to be certain of its significance. It has sheltered him, he has kissed it, it has curled up in that wound and stemmed the bleeding, it has embraced him as he drunk its venom from a bowl that shattered in his hands… and its fangs have sunk deep into his heart, it has lapped its coils around his throat as he begged it to squeeze harder, it has destroyed him when it dislodged itself and slithered away, and he crawled after it weeping.

It’s possible that it is mere coincidence, that a black snake has another meaning in Harper’s own dreams. Certainly it looked smaller and more slender, less like the muscular constrictor I’ve always dreamed. I didn’t see its eyes, which are so distinctive. Possibly there was some cross-contamination – I’d told him of a dream with that symbol, and it appeared here only because I’d given it that shape for him. Possibly he saw something else entirely – but the act of removing it from his wound and the colour are not easily dismissed.

It did distract me, although not for very long. I asked if I could take him somewhere more pleasant, if he would not permit me to help him through the archway. I had thought to show him that dream where The Silent held starlight as an apple in his hand and smiled at it. I haven’t dreamt it since I was about eight, but even if I forgot my dreams, I’d remember that one.

There are so few of them where anyone was… whole, let alone happy.

Harper permitted it, although not before looking out through the archway again. I formed the dream around us easily – the boat under our feet, the storm on the horizon, the sky strewn with all the stars except the one he needed, and the Silent standing at the tiller.

 Harper was not as… opposed… to the Silent as Shay was to the Thirsty, although he didn’t really seem to recognise it, either. He asked what the dream was.

I told him that I believed it to represent him and Celeste. I thought it might be some… comfort, I suppose.

He murmured “I knew you always saw too much,” and demanded that I take us back immediately.

So that was a miserable failure. I don’t understand why. Too great a contrast between the dream and the reality? Too obvious a falsehood, or too sharp a reminder? Was I simply wrong about what it represented and had dropped him into something with unpleasant connotations?

But I tried to give him what he wanted – at least, mostly. I was trying to reform the dream to place us in the memory, on the beach. That, too, failed. Maybe I didn’t know the memory well enough to shape it; maybe Harper was blocking me, not wanting me to trespass there; maybe he was too close to waking and that would account for the rapid deterioration of the dream after that point.

The storm caught us instantly, its winds roaring words I didn’t understand and pulling at the mast. The waves began to rise, crashing down onto the deck of the boat. I tried to urge Harper to take control and calm it; he wasn’t able. He was growing more visibly distressed as the boat began to come apart around us. Cause and effect. There was a familiarity about it, now; a calm and defeated Harper bleeding helplessly might trouble me, but standing with the Silent while the world tries to kill us is nothing new.

To me, anyway.

Ashes blew on the storm-winds. The deck beneath us began to give way. A swift blur of movement, and I was enveloped. Under other circumstances, perhaps, it would have been… difficult, but the shelter was welcome. I’d barely identified the warmth and solidity as Harper’s arms around me, holding me against his chest, before he was gone and the _dream_ broke with his waking.

There was no hiding from it in the space of the _tiny hut_ spell. We were both awake, we knew exactly what had happened and what I had seen. Harper left immediately, although not before I saw that he was crying. I… I thought about following him, but what could I do? Intrude upon his privacy _more?_ Leave the others asleep and unprotected in a probably fruitless effort to find him and attempt to explain myself? No. Useless. I reached out only enough to _send_ him an apology – inadequate words and much overused. Doubtless they ring entirely hollow to him by now – if I truly regretted my careless handling of his private affairs and old scars, surely it would make more sense for me to _stop trying_.

He tolerates Katy’s well-meaning idiocies, perhaps mine are not unforg – no. I am not Katy. I am older, better trained, less capable with emotional matters, and nobody with enough cranial matter to tempt an illithid would assume that my actions were well-meant rather than self-motivated.

I should have known better than to think I could help. Instead of whatever his usual nightmares are – the ones he is accustomed to and presumably knows how to handle – I have given him… what exactly? Harangued him about fighting for himself. Taken him away from a memory he could at least watch from the outside to a sinking ship, which is probably a sharper and more present fear for a sailor. I have witnessed something he never wanted another person to see, and I know how he guards and values his thoughts. I have unsettled him on the eve of a battle, when we already have an acknowledged weakness, an unknown foe, and stakes he considers too high. Should we meet with failure, it will be in no small part my fault.

I could argue that he gave his permission. I could argue that I brought little to the _dream_ that was not already present – that he was the one who summoned the storm to the boat. I could even argue that he demonstrated sufficient control of the dreamscape – even if only on the subconscious level - to either banish me or to wake himself up. I _could_ , but it wouldn’t convince anyone, not even me.

I knew there was a line, and I deliberately crossed it. I don’t see how to make amends for that. If the error was not fatal – if we all survive – perhaps I will be able to address the matter. I could offer – you worthless sewerage-sucking leech, Khem, you never learn. The harder you try, the worst you make matters. Stick to your spells – you have some passing competence in those – and stop assuming you can fix anything with them that _matters_.


	15. Codex #15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party enters Arrabar.  
> WHAT THEY FOUND WILL SHOCK YOU

… covered in those same thorny vines. I suggested burning them, which did not meet with a favourable reception; instead, Jorran sat down to beseech his goddess for aid. He’d barely composed himself – or whatever he actually does – when the briars parted. I was almost impressed, until he said it wasn’t his doing. It appeared, then, to be a direct invitation of the same kind as the locks of hair, intended personally for Harper and Jorran. The brambles drew apart to allow them to pass, but ignored or drew closer to the rest of us. So we rode through a thicket, controlled entirely by some unseen entity of demonstrated Abyssal power, who wanted Harper and Jorran but was not concerned about their hangers-on. It did not make for a reassuring passage, especially given my dreams of being dismembered by those thorns. Still, we emerged safely into the streets of Arrabar.

The extremely still streets of Arrabar – no movement of wind, people, or animals. We did find some of the townsfolk eventually, all within doors and frozen in place in the middle of their daily tasks. Some, if their expressions were any judge, had some warning of what was falling on them.

When I had speculated about an entity capable of stopping time for months – thus making sense of the identical scries of Celeste – I had not taken the thought very seriously; I did so merely because I dislike overlooking even remote possibilities. I was not at all sanguine about stepping into territory such a being had claimed as its own and had time to fortify against its expected guests.

I admit, I was fleetingly tempted to extract myself and as many of us as I could cajole or force through a _teleportation circle._ We were there, at least ostensibly, to rescue one girl; that balances poorly against my life and those of my allies, and even Jorran and Nepotyna. I didn’t even raise it, of course. Harper was not to be dissuaded, and I’m hardly suited for wrangling five other people into a course of action against their will – even if I were inclined to do so. I might have left alone without issue, but what appeared to be a stupidly dangerous and probably impossible task seemed likely to prove suicidal without my help. That doesn’t balance well, either.

 So on we went through those frozen streets, attacked at several intervals by fiends. They spoke Infernal, not Abyssal, and I recognised some of the species as devils. It was very curious, given the Abyssal magic I’d sensed – I thought for one ugly moment that some idiot had brought the Blood War to Arrabar – but eventually we won through to House Ferryman’s estate. It was protected against _clairvoyance,_ when I attempted to place a sensor in Jorran’s study. The main residence was surrounded by peculiar crystalline forms; _detect magic_ made little of them beyond a barrier of some strength. Harper intended to scout into the house himself, which was agreeable to precisely none of our party; I suggested he take Katy with him. Not the usual choice for that sort of investigation, but she could teleport them back to us if anything happened.

It did not, and all of us safely made it into the entrance hall of the mansion. The doors slammed shut behind Shay and the candles extinguished themselves; there was a moment of utter darkness before we were confronted by two bone devils and three animated suits of armour. The largest one of these was standing in what appeared to be a circle of abjuration magic.

We made some attempts to interact with it. Possibly it understood Infernal – at any rate, it made some gestures when I talked to it in that language – but it wasn’t a productive approach. Harper noted that we were wasting time, and I tried to _dispel_ the abjuration magic around the circle.

I’m still not entirely sure exactly what happened then. White light flared, and when my eyes had recovered, the devils and armour had disappeared. More intriguingly, the circle was now radiating something that looked like teleportation energy.

When I told the others as much, Harper (who had displayed moments of staring at the walls as though he was too overwhelmed to work out what they were) looked at us very seriously. He believed that the teleportation circle likely represented a point of no return, and wished to make it clear that we were in no way compelled to continue.

I told him not to be stupid, that we were there to see this through for him.

I didn’t hear what he said in response as we arranged ourselves around the circle – it was muttered under his breath – but the tone was not flattering.

It is, of course, _profoundly_ stupid to jump blind into a _teleportation circle_ cast by one’s enemies; doubly so when one’s opponent has the use of extraplanar magic. Not only are you sticking your neck directly in their trap, but there’s no guarantee you’ll even find yourself on the Prime Material Plane. Although I suppose that getting home is the least of your worries if you end up in the Infinite Abyss or the Nine Hells… We did have an alternative, apart from giving up and attempting to leave (which I judge unlikely to have succeeded in any case); we could have searched the house. But as I reasoned, it seemed unlikely to get us anywhere. Our opponent had successfully manipulated events so far, and we were completely in their power already; there was little more to lose by following the path they’d left for us.

 It felt as though we fell through a void for a very long time, before finding ourselves in a stone-walled room with a double door, and two women’s faces with flaming eyes as door-handles. I invoked _detect magic_ and immediately regretted it. The ambient magic of the place was so thick it hit like a physical blow; my eyes ached and the inside of my skull felt burned. Needless to say, I dropped it.

We were watched. A voice laughed at some of the things we attempted, and moaned disturbingly at others. To be fair, I’m not sure what response Harper was expecting when he kissed one of the faces. In any case, rings materialised when he and Jorran touched the doors; when they pinched the nostrils of the faces closed, the mouths opened and they could insert those rings. When they used them to knock, the doors swung open.

It still interests me that Harper was instructed in that method during his attempt to reach Celeste with _dream._ I have theories about why that might be the case, but no real way to prove or disprove them now.

Through the doors, we climbed a near-endless staircase. It took long enough that it reminded me of Daraam’s illusions; I put up _detect magic_ again just to see if that was what we were dealing with. Possibly also because I am a masochistic lackwit; the discomfort was considerably worse the second time around. However, I did garner that much of the ambient magic was Infernal in nature, and the sheer amount of it… well, it wasn’t illusion as far as I could see, but the sheer quantity and pervasiveness of it suggested that we might be in a magically created or unreal space – even a demiplane.

While I was trying to keep my brains from leaking out of my ears, Harper was using his. He discovered that space responded to his will in much the same way that _dream_ had; he successfully created a door and gave himself a torch. That seemed more promising; at my suggestion, Jorran also attempted to impose his will upon it. He succeeded, but being less practical than his brother, all he did was create a sandwich.

We went through the door Harper had willed. It almost became a pattern, really. Go through a door, find some sort of puzzle, eventually work out how to solve it, move onto the next one. They were interesting, in a peculiar way – one wonders about their precise purpose. To slow pursuit? To trap us? To test us? There would have been many simpler ways to hold or neutralise our group, and, as Harper pointed out, he and Jorran would have had a much more difficult time of it without someone who could read Infernal (there are spells to handle that sort of thing, and a cleric should be able to cast some of them. At least in theory… experience with Jorran paints a dimmer picture).

We might have stalled at one puzzle, elementally themed, if Shay didn’t habitually carry potted cacti around; the dirt answered the need for Earth admirably. While Harper and I began along the right lines in the room of statues, we were taken aback when our first step destroyed one of the sculptures, and it took eliminating all other possible options before we returned to the correct path. Another was childishly simple – no. That adverb is inaccurate; Katy was completely surprised that the answer to ‘White and gold, my treasure the child’ was an egg, even with one in front of her.

The final one contained glassed images – the open sea, the Ferryman home, a library, a Waukeenar temple, and a blue sky with scattered clouds. Shay suggested they might be portals, and so I cast _detect magic_ again. I learned nothing more than the fact we remained in an area of hideously dense ambient magic and I am an imbecile. The sensation of white-hot nails being hammered into my eyeballs also rendered it difficult for me to contribute much; I believe it was mostly Shay’s initial insight and Harper’s acuity that won us through the portal concealed in the image of the Ferryman estate.

We emerged into a study. On even a casual glance, it was apparent that someone had been concentrating their efforts on Evocation and Conjuration magic, as well as Infernal and Abyssal. There were a number of treatises on methods to leverage magic into other forms of power – some I haven’t seen since I was eight. The product of those researches was a large summoning circle (done in chalk; I could just hear Master Tesh-at’s favourite tirade on the subject). In short, it could have been a textbook illustration of the workspace of an idiot mage who’d summoned a fiend and then lost control.

When I found the journal in the desk drawer – written in unencrypted Common, for the sake of all that is sane – it confirmed a great many of my private hypotheses (on the face of it, it could have been written to mislead, but put together with everything else… no). The Eadric whose claims Jorran had dismissed had indeed turned to a fiendish patron in order to gain the power to take what he thought he deserved. To an extent, anyway. From his journal, he seemed very much the type who would have done something so short-sighted and ambitious sooner or later. Any Red Wizard can recognise one.

It’s hard to determine whether he was more flyblown stupid or more brainfroth arrogant. He detailed in his journal that he had made contact with a fiend he called Xenti. He recorded that he a) didn’t know _what_ she was (and the differences between devils, daemons and demons are something any would-be conjurer needs to know); b) didn’t know her True Name (which is about the most reliable point of leverage a mortal has against a fiend, if not the only one); and c) _didn’t care_.

Honestly, the moron was an object lesson even before we found his screaming face in a jar.

Harper talked Jorran out of his misplaced guilt (because it was obviously his fault that this insanely deficient individual had chosen House Ferryman as a target) and we left the study. A line of light shot from Harper’s feet, and from Jorran’s, leading them down to the large room where a person wrapped in Evocation and Illusion magic was waiting for us. There was a family resemblance – mostly around the eyes – although he looked younger than either Harper or Jorran.

The exchange that followed was very much what could be expected. Our opponent explained in a manner that reminded me strongly of our erstwhile drow guide that he had lured Harper and his brother home in order to kill them, and gloated about how well his plans had succeeded. Harper paid that bilge about the respect it deserved, culminating in stabbing him when he threatened Celeste.

It broke the illusion around him; the figure aged rapidly and disappeared, leaving us standing in front of an erinyes. Not a safe place to be, especially when she summoned additional support and the bluefire brazier in front of her simply swallowed my spell (and Katy’s, she didn’t learn from example or heed my warning) and spat the magical energy out in a more dangerous form.

So. Harper, Shay and Nepotyna tried to knock over the brazier, but it was warded. Katy and I, and possibly Jorran (difficult to tell, since Katy spent a great deal of time trying to haul him back into cover) were functionally useless while the brazier was burning. Erinyes are high-ranking fiends, with the personal power to lead Infernal armies. Harper and Shay (possibly Nepotyna) could perhaps hold her for a while, but not indefinitely, particularly if she called more forces to her. As it was, it did not seem a fight that could be won.

I turned and ran away. It was… not easy. Certainly I’m not interested in being uselessly slaughtered, which was about all I could expect if I remained cowering in that room, but desertion? My allies were there, all of whom I had a responsibility to protect, and I was particularly determined not to let Harper get himself killed for this. Anything could have happened in my absence, but then again, what could I have done if I remained?

 It was a slim chance, but it was all I could think to do. There was no reason to assume it was there to be found – if he had it he should have _used_ it – but I ran back to the study and I tore through the moron’s research, and I reconstructed the erinyes’s True Name (which I _will not_ set down here). It felt like eternity before I rejoined the others, but, thinking about it now, it must have been less than a minute.

Bloody buggering hells, I can’t believe anyone could have been as staggeringly stupid as that madman. He had all the information he needed to find out the True Name and he just _never_ did the minimal research necessary to put it together.

Well. When I invoked the name, the brazier’s flame died and it tipped over. It was a long and difficult battle even from that point. Katy lost control of her wild magic (thankfully in a harmless manner); Jorran, Harper and Shay were all severely injured, and Nepotyna came very close to bleeding to death before Shay intervened with that blessing of Yurtrus.  Eventually, however, the erinyes’s physical form was sufficiently damaged to prevent her from remaining on the Prime Material Plane. Probably it looked like a death to the others; I haven’t raised the possibility that she could return under favourable conditions.

There doesn’t seem much point.

Shay took a metal vial from the erinyes’s body, which Katy insisted I _identify_. I’ve never touched anything like that before; I was instantly overcome with nausea and weakness, I could feel the beginnings of a tremor, and I think if I’d held it another instant I would have simply collapsed on the floor. I don’t like the implications of the erinyes having it, and I like even less the idea of it in Shay’s possession. If it doesn’t have something to do with Yurtrus, I’ll pry its cap off and drink its contents myself.

I told Shay not to open it – about all I had words for, although thankfully the affliction subsided once the vial was out of my hands. I must speak with her about it at some point, but tonight is not the time.

Once everyone had taken advantage of such healing as Katy’s wand and Jorran’s spells and Shay’s potions provided, we pressed on into the house. It bore distinctive signs that fiends had been amusing themselves in it – numerous servants dead by various means, and the more ostentatious fates saved for what appeared to be Harper’s father and the moron. The former appeared to have been partially phased through a wall and then petrified – not a simple feat – while the latter, as previously mentioned, was nothing more than two eyes, two ears, a nose and a screaming mouth in a glass jar.

We also found one sending stone. I suggested to Harper that he attempt to use it, but he felt it unwise, given that there might have been resistance remaining in the house. Possibly things would have been considerably simpler if he had, or if I hadn’t been swayed by the argument and used it myself.

In any case, we eventually found ourselves at the top of a tower. It was outfitted as a bedroom and appeared precisely similar to the room we had seen Celeste in when I scried her, apart from the details that she wasn’t there, the bars of the window had been sawn through, and a heavy rope dangled out of it. Shay ran down the side of the tower to investigate, while I looked around the room. She came back with the news that there were two sets of footprints she’d been unable to follow while I was reading the note I found on the bed.

It had apparently been scrawled by someone signing themselves ‘CR’ at about the same time as we had been dealing with the erinyes. The writer thanked us for providing the diversion which enabled them to remove Celeste from the house and take ship.

I gave the note to Harper, who in turn thrust it at Jorran and bolted from the room. Katy followed immediately, as she is wont to do; Jorran looked perplexed and shouted at Harper to stop – rather ineffectually, he must have been halfway down the stairs by then. It took some patient interrogation to learn that: the handwriting looked familiar to him; he wasn’t sure where Harper was going; and that Arrabar’s harbour was north of the house. It seemed to me that Harper had probably gone in pursuit of his sister, and that he was unlikely, either on foot or on horseback, to catch up with a ship that might have left Arrabar as much as an hour before.

I confirmed that Shay could keep up, and that Jorran and Nepotyna were willing to try, then I _polymorphed_ myself into a giant eagle. Shay ran below, the Waukeenar hung on as best they could, and I flew north. (Incidentally, the presence of two people holding onto your feathers and interfering with your aerodynamics greatly decreases the pleasure of flight). There was one ship visible on the water, and I quickly caught it. Not something that the sailors took very kindly to, although I was able to dodge their arrows. Unfortunately, it was the wrong ship. I climbed to a higher altitude, but even with an eagle’s eyes, I saw no other ships. I might have ranged wider, but Shay… she’d actually followed me out to sea. She’s swift enough to run on water, but that only works while she’s in motion. It had been a long day and she had been injured; I did not want her to suddenly tire. She can’t swim any more than I can.

So we returned to the docks, where Harper and Katy were waiting. Katy had found the pair of the sending stone, apparently dropped on the docks. Harper… he was dazed and slow, as he was during our earliest attempts to discover what was going on with Celeste, and he held CR’s note crumpled against his chest as he visibly tried to regain control of himself.

I thought it was simply fear for his sister, now in someone else’s hands and again out of his reach, until Jorran asked him what was wrong.

Harper said, “I think she’s with Cort,” and he said the name like… like a stone dropping into a still pond, or a chime into silence. He spoke little more about the man, uncharacteristically hesitant and fumbling through his sentences, but he spoke of Cort as one who would have saved Celeste if he could, and as someone he trusted. Jorran also appeared to know the name, immediately trying to reassure Harper that if she was with Cort, she was safe. It didn’t meet with notable success.

I realise I may be over-simplifying matters, linking things that have no innate connection, but the pieces seem to fall together. A man with an association with the Ferryman family (bowed to the crowned vulture); a correlation with Celeste (Harper’s memory of three figures on the beach)… but, mostly, the way Harper reacted. I had previously deduced that the figure represented by the ocean-eyed serpent was a lover, and one who was probably his sekhme-at [ _Another Mulhorandi term that is not simple to translate; ‘vulnerability’, ‘fatal flaw’, ‘nemesis’, ‘anathema’ and ‘catalyst’ all express something of the same sentiment, but ultimately fall short. Our translator eventually said: ‘One’s sekhme-at is the thing against which no defence is possible’. A person can never steel themselves against it or protect themselves – even should they wish it - nor can anyone do so for them. A person may fight their sekhme-at or embrace it, but they can never win free of it.]_

He found his way through his fragments of sentences as I might if I ever tried to speak of that exam, those _mage hands…_

Nobody pressed the matter, however, and we returned to the mansion to finish clearing it. It was uneventful, save for the discovery of several more inventive ways to kill servants - I doubt even the elders of Shay’s monastery would have thought to lodge a piece of silverware between every vertebra – and Katy eventually dissolving the pieces of Eadric’s face with sufficient acid to quell the screaming.

Afterwards, and thoroughly exhausted, we went down into the town to an inn for the night; it appears Harper at least disliked the idea of trying to sleep in that house. I would like to speak with him – I owe him an apology at the very least – and an idea about the possible destination of Celeste and Cort has just occurred to me – but… no. The last thing anyone needs after a day like this – especially him – is to endure my attempts at conversation. I would also like to sit down with my notes about Harper’s _dream_ and my _scries,_ now that we know what was going on in Arrabar, to discern exactly why we got the results we did, but it’s a problem for another time ...

… poised in the air, sharp eyes scanning the ground for prey. The air was warm, supportive under my wings, and the sun’s heat was fierce against my back. I was where I should be, mistress of my element, glorying in the perfection of the endless hunting present. I saw a woman in the fields below – her head bare, golden and marked with delicate tattoos, her robe red. She threw up her arm. A signal, and obediently I fell from the sky to land on her fist. My talons pierced the skin, and her hand bled freely.

I cried out, a high, whistling shriek, and she stroked my head before she hooded me. She fanned out one of my wings, clumsily hacking through the flight feathers. I screamed as she cut me, and in the darkness of the blindfold, I realised that the hands, the tattoos – those were mine…

… I haven’t had the abesh-Re dream in years. [ _Literally translated as ‘daughter of Re’, abesh-Re is the Mulhorandi name for what is otherwise known as the red-streaked kestrel or the cuckoo-hawk. Re, before he was superseded by his son Horus or Horus-Re, was the Mulhorandi god of the sun, commonly depicted with a falcon’s head. As suggested by its Common name, the bird is one of the smaller Eastern grassland kestrels, tawny in colour with dramatic red streaks, thickening to a solid colour on the wing- and tail-tips. It is popularly supposed to resemble a fireball when hovering. A solitary bird, it tolerates the company of its own kind only during the mating season, and the female often wounds or kills the tiercels during courtship battle. She lays her eggs in the nest of various prey birds; the host-mother and her own chicks are early food for the young kestrel. Despite the dreamer’s description, the cuckoo-hawk is rarely used by falconers; if hooded and jessed, it will typically become unresponsive and refuse food, or else throw itself into a self-destructive frenzy trying to win free.]_

_[A note in the margin: Serannis, what the fuck is with all this ornithology? That’s not what we’re looking for here!]_

I wonder what triggered it now... the flight yesterday? Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s changed since the last time. I’m not usually so clearly placed within the perspective of the abesh-Re, and this is the first time I have seen exactly who the falconer was. I’ll reflect more on it at some point, but this morning is not the time…

… under other circumstances, I’d call today a long day. It doesn’t rank next to yesterday, however.

Harper and Jorran were discussing their plans for the future. While neither seems very enthusiastic about tending to the family estate, neither are they inclined to sell it off or neglect it; apart from anything else, Celeste may have an interest in it. On that subject, I offered to _scry_ her. Harper showed distinct signs of tension and little enthusiasm – not in keeping with the concern he has shown throughout this affair for Celeste’s wellbeing, but a reaction consistent with someone uncertain about the prospect of seeing their sekhme-at. He recovered, however – not without some prompting from Jorran - and they began discussing exactly what of the events in their house they would report to the governor of Arrabar, and in what manner. I suggested to them that there was really no need to mention their familial connection to the moron responsible; power-hungry and inept warlocks may choose any unfortunate area to conduct their experiments and then lose control of them. It is, after all, the approach I intend to take with my own report to Master Drax when I return to Silverymoon. Its merits did not appeal to Harper, nor was the suggestion much appreciated; there appeared to be some principle I’m unfamiliar with at work.

The townsfolk we passed on the way to the governor’s place of business were in one sense quite recovered from the effects of the stopped time; they were for the most part going the usual business of a town and comparing their experiences. On the other… it appears that while their bodies were held in suspension, their awareness was not, or not entirely. The experience left them with an understandable fear of further magic wielded against them, and a method of dealing with that fear approximately as peculiar as it was enthusiastic.

They were looking for ‘witches’ to burn.

It seemed to me that if they were looking for culprits for the magic wielded against them, a Red Wizard of Thay would be an obvious fit. I was exceedingly careful with my hood, and I stressed the importance of a private place to attempt _scrying_ Celeste after Harper had finished bribing the governor of Arrabar to keep reprisals clear of House Ferryman.

So we went back to the estate. Jorran assisted me to scour Celeste’s room for a more suitable scrying focus than the locks of hair that had been sent (by the moron or the erinyes, I wonder?), while Shay and Nepotyna started to work on the bodies, and Harper went over the account books. Eventually we gathered and I cast the spell for them.

We saw Celeste – recognisably the same woman I’d seen previously, and apparently unharmed – in the cabin of a ship. She appeared to be writing at a desk when a man knocked and entered. He was tall, solid and muscular in build, with the shoulders and arms of a swordsman: a match for the figure I saw on the beach with Harper and Celeste in that memory. Black-haired (save for a touch of grey) and blue-eyed: an unusually direct parallel for dream-symbolism.

It’s not like the recurring – I don’t _know_ beyond doubt that this Cort is the man represented by the ocean-eyed serpent, and if he has taken other guises in my dreams, I don’t automatically know them. I am… wary of asking Harper about the subject. But I am almost entirely convinced, in my own mind, that what I have so far deduced is correct.

I mustn’t have been fully recovered from the previous day; a loud crash from downstairs was enough to break my concentration on the _scry_. Shameful, to lose it so easily; it was not even under combat conditions. It’s understandable – if unacceptable – to lose focus when suddenly injured. To do so at just a _noise_ is pathetic.

Harper rushed down, and called for me almost immediately (interesting, and I confess to being faintly flattered by it; it’s pleasant to have one’s usefulness acknowledged). I scented the smoke as I came down, but it was still a shock to find the entire room on fire. The others followed as I started putting it out – it’s a good thing I do have that staff of frost, it would have been a long and intensive task otherwise.

It appears it was kindled by people throwing flasks of burning oil through the broken windows (primitive, but effective). Harper raised the point that the point of his deal with the governor was to prevent this sort of reprisal, and also asked how people knew to target that house. A leak somewhere along the line is possible – I have no idea how discreet the governor’s office may be, but certainly we haven’t been – but it seems equally likely that the moron had made a show of his base of power before the town was frozen.

It doesn’t change very much, as far as I’m concerned, but it’s a point of enquiry – especially if, as Jorran was saying to Harper, a member of the family is required to remain there to maintain the estate. Harper seems to be increasingly of the opinion that that duty should not fall on Jorran’s shoulders unless he wants it; Jorran of the position that it has to be done, however much he would prefer to concentrate on his vocation.

It seems – probably deceptively – rather like the question of my own inheritance and the holdings of House Xul. Not a frequent problem among the nobility or the Red Wizards, but it does occur. I wonder if the similarity is sufficient that it would be helpful to offer the two most common solutions for their consideration…

… I dreamed a figure, dressed in tatters of dirty white cloth. He was dancing, nimble-footed and inexhaustible, in the middle of a city square. He held a flute to his lips, intricately carved from bone, and the music that came from it was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. Slowly I approached, awestruck and unworthy, and I was not alone. The Silent was at my left hand, the Erratic at my right, and an immense crowd of others – familiar faces among them – were also there, drawn to that indescribable, soaring melody.

I saw the Thirsty, lying at the figure’s feet, broken and torn and dead. I realised that the flute had been carved from her femur. All the assembled crowd began to sing, the music swelling in poignant loveliness – all the pleasures, all the answers embodied in a stream of sound breathed from the Thirsty's bone. I saw the blood run from ruptured eardrums, and I saw the Silent and the Erratic drop as the music became too glorious to bear…

… I have speculations. Nothing more. I have dreamed it twice before, but it was always silent. Perhaps I am closer in time to whatever event the dream portends – if indeed it does. Perhaps I have changed into the sort of person who can hear the killing music, who can briefly survive it.

I should have spoken to Harper last night. I refuse to let myself put it off any longer… and I know that isn’t consistent when I have been avoiding asking a question of Shay for so long now.

There are things I don’t know how to face.


	16. Codex #16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of things to be cleared up in the aftermath of the fight at the Ferryman estate. Khem continues to be confused. Except about the fact that they saw a KIRIN, not a UNICORN, Katy, there's a difference

My _message_ found Harper at work in his family’s house, and once I’d left a note for Shay, I sought him out there. It was a… less difficult conversation than I had been anticipating. I offered him my apology for trespassing on his dream; he dismissed the offence and told me he appreciated the thought behind the attempt. He suggested that I should refrain from entering his dreams again – a conclusion I had already reached – but on the grounds that he felt it might be dangerous, and he disliked the idea of his subconscious causing me harm.

There were so many objections he could have reasonably voiced; that one would never have occurred to me. It seems unlikely that it was his primary concern, which in turn suggests that he either considered that particular approach one likely to sway me – from the self-interest angle, I suppose – or perhaps that it was intended to be tactful.

Experience suggests it’s probably impossible for me to walk away from a conversation with Harper without some strange behaviour or twist of thought to mull over and attempt to wrestle into sense. Katy also frequently puzzles me, if in a more straightforward fashion, and Shay has her moments, but Harper always does _something_. It’s all the more confusing as I thought we’d been working well together as of late. In this case, he proclaimed himself in my debt for all I’d contributed towards resolving the situation with his sister.

Of course I was of use. Of course I helped. I am passably intelligent, very well educated, and increasing in magical proficiency with every passing day; in any such situation as the one Harper faced, something like me would be exceedingly valuable. Idiot self-deprecation is not among my faults. Nevertheless, I was not irreplaceable. Certainly I counselled Harper against running straight for Arrabar and the trap laid there – but, in the end, that was essentially what we did anyway. With or without me – or the others – I am of the belief that Harper is sufficiently determined and cunning to have found his own way through the matter eventually.

Without Katy to continually wrestle him back, though, he might have lost Jorran.

I reminded him that the matter of my life, saved at considerable risk of his own, had already been between us. If he now counted that paid I would be pleased, but he’s hardly in my debt for what I was able to do. It was an interesting challenge, during which I was able to experiment with some spells that are very unlikely to be so relevant again; I was able to participate in the untangling of an intriguing puzzle; and I learned a great deal about subjects as diverse as the Abyss, the erinyes and their capabilities, the awe-inspiring depths of human stupidity, and Harper’s background. There are so many dreams for which I now have some sort of context; each answered question is like the silencing of distant shrieking. Certainly there was commensurate risk, but nothing as implacable or immediate as lying unconscious in a field of _cloudkill_.

Harper had mentioned some time ago that Celeste had been raised by her mother’s family; it had occurred to me that her keeper might intend to return her to them. I suggested the possibility to Harper, whose expression stated that it hadn’t occurred to him. Well, it seemed reasonable to me, but I don’t pretend to understand local custom. Apparently it has been so long since he’s been in contact with Cort, he doesn’t know where the man might consider safe haven. I offered either, both, to send him into Celeste’s _dream_ , and to create a scroll of _sending_ by which Jorran might reach Celeste.

I don’t think he noticed what I wasn’t offering. I have dreamed Celeste, as far as I can identify her, twice in twenty years. Together with what Harper told me, that was sufficiently familiar to target her with _dream_ but not _sending._ I have… dozens of dreams in which the ocean-eyed serpent featured. I could easily have placed Harper into Cort’s dream. It’s possible I could even _send_ to him. I wasn’t going to raise the possibility.

By the very definition, there is no defending or protecting Harper from his sehkme-at; no way to soften the blow or reduce the degree of power it holds over him. I acknowledge that, even as it… irks me. Nevertheless, it would be pointlessly cruel to fling him into the storm before it reaches us.

I did confirm that Harper agrees with me – that the ocean-eyed serpent does represent this man Cort. He did not find the matter easy to speak of, and I did not push it; still, he flinched at the name, said that they had parted on bad terms due to Harper’s fault, and that he was uncertain both of how Cort now felt about him and how Harper felt about the prospect of meeting him again. I asked him to let me know if there was anything I could do, and mentioned that I would be watching Cort carefully.

Harper burst into laughter. Apparently he anticipates no harm from this man – which doesn’t quite accord with his obvious trepidation on the subject – and I realised I’d made a cardinal error. Mistress Kharzura would have been absolutely scathing. I had reasoned that since Harper had recognised the ocean-eyed serpent in the dream where it sheltered the masked ash-rabbit, it represented a past event. That’s supportable. The unfounded assumption I quietly made was to therefore believe all the other dreams where the serpent appeared also represented past events or past truths.

There’s no grounds for that. Some of it – _all_ of it - may still be waiting for him… the kisses, the strangulation, the bloodied embraces, the ruined flesh and shattered bones. However that appears in the waking world.

And there will be nothing any of us can do.

Probably I stared foolishly at Harper while he laughed. I know whatever I did say afterwards was simple and trite – my mind was elsewhere. Fortunately, the business of cleaning out the idiot warlock’s tower was sufficiently engrossing as to prevent me dwelling overmuch on some of those dream-images; indulging in incredulous contempt is a pleasant counter-irritant. I suppose only time will tell what is past and what is yet to be – which is either a mildly profound phrase or a deeply stupid one.

When neither Katy nor Shay had turned up around lunchtime, we returned to the inn to look for them. Apparently they’d decided that Harper and I had deserted them, and therefore the best use of their time was to buy alcohol and take it down to the beach to drink. They were set upon by bandits who swiftly learned the folly of their actions; Katy cast something that sounds like _circle of death_. When the aggressors fled, an illusion peeled away from a nearby hillside and out stepped what – from the description – was almost certainly a kirin, even if Katy insisted on calling it a unicorn. Just to irritate me, probably. It healed the damage that had been done by the spell and stepped back into its cave.

A kirin. I would have liked to see it (ignoring the fact that celestial beings have never taken well to my order, either before or after the development of the black unicorn); instead I expressed an interest in inspecting where it had been. Useless, really. My interest in the more exotic creatures that inhabit Faerûn is not a practical one, except to the degree that I’ve been able to identify most of the things that have attacked us. Even if it were, there’s doubtless little to be garnered from an inspection of its habitat. Nevertheless I am curious.

Katy insisted that Harper carry her to her bed; I spoke to Jorran about the scroll. He’s never cast from one before – which is really quite an elementary skill, to my mind. Then again, one presumes that the priesthood of a goddess of wealth are encouraged to be thrifty, and scrolls are not generally inexpensive. Given that he thought Harper was capable of using it, though, it suggests that either he doesn’t know much about scroll-casting, or else that he knows something relevant about Harper that I don’t. In either case, I apprised him of his word limit and he went to draft out his _sending._

That left Shay and I in the common room of the tavern. Unsurprisingly, Shay was drinking; what is rather less common, she asked if I’d join her. I dislike refusing when she does ask something of me, but the truth remains that between the unfiltered speech and the disordered dreams, alcohol is simply not worth it. Instead we talked about our pursuit of the ship we had supposed to contain Celeste and Cort, and how it was not the wisest decision that either of us had ever made.

Well, _I_ talked; Shay was even quieter than usual. I think I erred when she turned the subject to Harper and I mentioned my belief that he would stay in Arrabar had he not promised to aid Shay. I did add that I might be projecting – that my own longing for home might have led me to ascribe a similar motivation to him – but nevertheless Shay excused herself shortly afterwards.

I am inept as always in these matters…

… Black water, only dimly illuminated by the baleful glare of an eye larger than the mind can hold. The crushing weight of water is less than the numbing force of will; my thoughts are sluggish and ill-formed. The sound of a cracked bell coils through the water. The Thirsty hangs limp and inverted and ashen, long ago drowned. The Silent holds the Erratic and kicks desperately and unevenly for the surface. If he loosed her he might perhaps make it before his lungs peel into ribbons, but she too is already dead and he will not. There is not enough of me left for magic, no strength to fight the water. I wait as black mouths open and reveal black teeth. The bell sounds once more and shatters. I am devoured, but there is no relief from pain, and no ending…

…. I have noted several of Jorran’s shortcomings here, and I have expressed my opinion of his education. It’s only just to admit I could not have lifted the curse on that ring and that he did so admirably. Since it made the amulet I’ve been wearing for years redundant, I went to offer it to Katy. She could certainly benefit from its protective magic; however, she refused it – and offered me the ring of fire resistance I had originally given her. I suppose I shall just have to expend the energy to cast _mage armour_ on her. It’s a waste.

We also spoke of Shay – if in a rather roundabout, confusing, and typically Katyish fashion. Initially she asked me whether she looked better with blonde or black hair. I told her I wasn’t the right person to ask – which should have been obvious even to her – but she insisted. So I told her the truth: she looked best in my eyes when that wild magic surge made her hair fall out. As anyone might, without that messy fibrous excrescence creeping out of their head. As anticipated, it wasn’t an answer Katy was prepared to accept. She asked me if the Thayan baldness was sexually motivated – if it was arousing or a fetish.

Well, she would. And I suppose it could be considered so, at least to the degree that someone who demonstrates basic hygiene is more attractive than someone who does not.

I did try to explain the hygiene aspect, without giving her the full history of the Mulan people – something she would have neither appreciation or patience for. Also, as some theorists have noted, when one isn’t shedding like a mangy, flea-ridden street cur, one is less likely to leave scryable bits of oneself where one’s enemies can find them.

Then Katy got to the point, which was: did I believe that Shay would prefer her with blonde or black hair? Even aware of her attraction, I hadn’t seen that coming, and it took me a moment to make sense of it. I don’t think Katy was very pleased with my answer that I’d never known Shay to express a preference; she announced that she was going to have to ask Harper even though she hadn’t wanted to, and flounced off.

When the four of us were gathered over breakfast, Harper was noticeably impatient to cast _sending_ to Celeste… which, oddly, was paired with a reluctance to be in the room while Jorran attended to it. He vacillated – his presence wouldn’t contribute anything, did I need him there, should he go wake Jorran, and so forth. He’s not usually so indecisive. Eventually he did come, I woke Jorran (who’d fallen asleep at his desk; I know what that feels like) and we got on with things.

There was a little discussion over the message to be sent. Jorran had a serviceable draft – although with some unnecessary words – and had left space for Harper to add to it if he wished. Very tentatively, he suggested that Jorran tell Celeste that they loved her. I thought it might be rather more useful to let her know that if she responded, Jorran would hear her, but once I’d trimmed the excess, there was space for both. Harper had also altered Jorran’s original draft. It was… interesting. He had taken my recommendation, which was unsurprising, but he’d also both inserted ‘we love you’ and removed his own name from the message, so there was no clear indication who was included in that ‘we’. Still, Jorran _sent_ it without issue, and I cast _scrying_ so we could see Celeste receive the message.

She looked startled and a little suspicious – no unusual reaction if she’d never been the subject of a _sending_ spell before – but told Jorran she’d pass along the message to the man Cort. With that dealt with, Jorran asked Harper why he’d taken his name out of the message; a question that would have been more useful before sending it. I had thought there was probably some reason to remove his name and keep the plural, but Harper’s reaction when I mentioned it was so obviously belated recognition of an error. He turned and left the room; Jorran and I followed.

The argument that followed was loud and vehement. Harper repeated ‘it’s fine’ approximately as often as Jorran said ‘you should rest’. Possibly I shouldn’t have been there. Jorran clearly wished me to leave, and Harper wanted neither of us; it’s not as though I even interjected once. Harper, it turns out, thinks that the knowledge of his involvement might make his sister or his sehkme-at less willing to return to Arrabar. He spoke of wanting to ‘fix things’ – or yelled about it, to be more accurate, although he was considerably louder when Jorran pointed out that he seemed upset. And I’m told _I_ have a tendency to state the obvious.

Well, Jorran left him alone when Harper specifically requested it, and so did I, although that ‘There’s nothing anyone can do to help me’ rang unpleasantly in my mind, and continues to do so now. I wasn’t at all surprised, however, when he appeared entirely in control of himself, almost merry, by the time he rejoined us downstairs. Katy, Shay and I – well, mostly Katy – were planning to go down to the beach for what she called a ‘picnic’. As Harper was less than comfortable with the idea of us there without the supervision of at least one person who could swim (although between _water breathing_ and _polymorph_ , it’s hardly an insurmountable problem), he came with us.

It was an interesting excursion on several points. I quickly found the illusory section of cliff that masked the kirin’s lair, but didn’t feel inclined to _dispel_ or otherwise meddle with it; there’s no point in causing offense to something that operates on that level. Shay wandered off; Katy requested I stay with the food and guard it from the assorted gulls and crabs who apparently had nefarious designs upon it. She’d already killed one crab for venturing too near – and eaten it. She and Harper went down to the water to attend to swimming lessons.

Harper came back in some disquiet. He said that the fish, eels, and other aquatic animals were too curious, too intrusive, and wanted to know if that was usual or something to worry about. I repeated what I’d said when Katy first described a kirin – the area around its lair flourishes, as do its occupants. Where a kirin lives, plants are healthy and grow at an unusual rate; animals grow more intelligent, more fearless, and healthier. As we spoke, the bits of shell that Katy had left from her mouthful of crab began to twitch, and then regenerated themselves into a full crab, who scuttled away.

I recommended he go check on Katy, lest the parts that she’d swallowed were doing likewise. I wasn’t entirely serious – the sort of disruption to the local ecology that would cause is not really in keeping with all I’ve ever read of kirins – but Harper went haring off anyway. Eventually Shay turned up and laid herself down on the edges of the blanket – napping, apparently. I suppose I should have spoken to her then, but I still cannot find the words.

Much later, Harper returned from further up the beach. He said that he and Katy had spoken with the kirin in its cave, and that it would welcome further visitors. While I had misgivings on the subject, I was much too curious to heed them, and I went to investigate. Shay was strangely apathetic. She said she’d already seen it, and didn’t want to seek it out unless I was afraid to go by myself. I was not – although certainly she has lectured me on several occasions about going into possible danger without her – but I simply don’t understand why one would be more interested in sleeping than in meeting with something so unusual and rare.

The cave was full of gold and gems – apparently the kirin finds them appealing, and can also possibly create them spontaneously. To my mind, they looked rather tawdry beside the creature itself. The descriptions I’ve read were accurate enough, but the illustrations were rather lacking. And its aura… I had read that it was supposed to exude an aura of calm, reassurance, serenity – basically everything that is the complete opposite of my customary mental attitudes. I wasn’t prepared for how that would feel. It didn’t matter that I knew what it was doing; it sank in and soothed everything away. I could feel control slipping away, and I couldn’t fight it, I couldn’t worry about it, I couldn’t even _resent_ it until after I left.

No doubt that emotional drugging contributed to how I spoke to it, but it’s very hard to untangle now. As it transpires, it was trapped and bound there some time ago against its will. I was – and am – very interested in finding out how that was done and inspecting the binding. But is that because that’s an impressive feat and I want to know how it was achieved, or because it wants to know so it can be freed? I have detached myself from the matter as far as seems possible now – I told Katy to consider it her own personal research project (she wants to unbind it, and there’s even less way to tell if that’s her own desire or an imposed one). I’ll help her if she asks, but I’m not going to pursue it.

I can imagine several reasons why one might bind a celestial to a location, especially one like a kirin. It would serve admirably as a power source, of course. It might have been intended to help the Arrabar coastline prosper, which is exactly what it is doing. It might have even been for the generation of wealth; it was happy enough for Katy and I to take a couple of jewels. The binding itself must have been created by either an extremely powerful mage, or a close-linked circle of them. It must be both strong and flawless; a kirin could probably break or erode anything less.

Master Drax can send a team to look into the matter if he wants; let _his_ people have their wills eroded and their thoughts suffocated in that cloying insistence that everything is exactly as it should be. I’m not going back.

Eventually either Katy and I ran out of questions, or the kirin released us, and we left the cave. Perhaps it was withdrawal or backlash from the imposed emotional state, but almost immediately afterward Katy grew despondent and moody. Since Shay could as easily nap elsewhere, I had no particular reason to stay longer, and Harper’s first priority in most situations appears to be the placation of Katy’s whims, we returned to the inn.

I spoke with Shay about that vial she had taken from the erinyes. It had felt like pestilence to me and had made me feel ill; Shay had felt nothing of that at all. She’d also experienced a vision which depicted her pouring it down a well. That seemed like an excellent way to kill a large number of people to me, and I told Shay as much. I also asked her if her association with a deity of death and disease was worth it.

She said she didn’t know. The fact that this god has taken an interest in Shay concerns me, as does whatever he might request of her in the future; the fact that she doesn’t seem decided about the matter is worse. It’s one thing to serve a deity for power, or because you agree with his agenda and wish to further it – Jarnath and Jorran, for example – another to simply let yourself be used. Surely she is too much the child of Thay to passively – no. She was a slave. In that context it makes perfect sense. So the question becomes how to encourage her in independent thought – while, even now, I could theoretically order her to cease dealing with Yurtrus, it wouldn’t answer in the long run. And that is theoretical; I’ve never had cause to attempt to order Shay against her will, and even if the order would be beneficial – which it mightn’t – I dislike the idea of doing so.

Instead I only reminded her that I would go with her to Silverymoon as soon as she said the word, whether or not the others were ready to leave. I would not be best pleased to leave Harper and Katy behind, but it may yet be the best way to balance all my obligations to my allies, if they should come into conflict. While Harper’s repeatedly stated he will honour his promise to aid Shay in Sundabar, a gelatinous cube could perceive he also wants to remain here – and Katy will go where Harper goes, despite her attraction to Shay and expressed distaste for Arrabar.

And I very nearly said other things to Shay, but my nerve failed me. I told myself that it was simply the open tavern room and many surrounding patrons that prevented me from speaking, but of course that’s pathetic; she would have come upstairs and into privacy to talk if I’d asked. Instead I sat there while she drank, like a lumpish coward as usual, until Harper came downstairs again.

Apparently Katy had announced her intention to nap, and Harper intended to go into town and do something about replacing the dead estate staff. Since it sounded marginally more interesting than watching Shay drink and castigating myself, I offered to accompany him. Judging from the expression he quickly hid, he hadn’t expected it.

It was… an interesting walk. Not on account of Harper’s business so much as the conversation on the way. He told me about how he had taken offence to the inn’s cook – she’d asked Katy to gather poison for her, intending to use it to kill her husband’s children and thereby control his wealth – and how Harper had therefore threatened to kill her if she didn’t leave town immediately. I had thought he’d exhibited a strange sympathy for slaves when he was so solicitous about the welfare of those three in Waterdeep; perhaps it wasn’t their slavery that concerned him, but the fact that two of them were children. In any case, while the action was of little consequence, I appreciated that he told me of it. He seemed a little uncertain about why he’d done so, although he should know by now how much I value information. Even information of dubious relevance.

Well. There’s an inconsistency there. I state that I value information, but I don’t have a great deal of time for many of the subjects Jorran favours for study or discussion. I suppose that the difference is that anything that sheds light on one of the recurring may help make sense of a lifetime’s dreams, or why I have dreamed them… whereas it’s difficult to imagine how the history of Chondathan shoemaking techniques could ever be useful.

We discussed the kirin, a little – why it was there, whether I intended to investigate its bindings. I shared my conclusions on the subject, speculative as they were; as I told him, I’d never really given much thought to the binding of celestial creatures before. He offered a small jab about how I was welcome to this new and edifying experience. No discourtesy had been inferred – it’s an intriguing thought-puzzle, the untangling of mysteries is, after all, my avocation, and I am more familiar with his sarcasm by now – but Harper almost immediately apologised for ‘being a dick’ and for being poor company. Apparently Katy’s disappointment, and the steps he would need to take to make reparation for it, were weighing largely on his mind.

It is not my custom to interfere with how others manage their wastet-le, even in this highly unorthodox situation where Katy is my wastet-le also. There was a great deal I could have said, if I considered myself free to voice it. Instead I only told him that I did not have his interpersonal skills, and that Katy frequently perplexes me. Harper dropped the subject almost before I’d finished the sentence. I had the impression – not for the last time that evening - that he had been looking for some response in particular, which I’d failed to provide. Perhaps it was connected to his professed opinion that I hide behind a false protestation of how little I understand emotional matters.

In any case, we ended up at a stationery shop, where Harper bought the most expensive calligraphy set it had to offer and gave it to me. It was intended as repayment for the materials I had expended creating the _sending_ scroll for Jorran, he said. He appeared to consider irrelevant the facts that a) I used what was available at his family home, b) the cost of the equipment has no discernible effect on the finished product, and c) the true cost in scroll creation is time and magical energy, neither of which are easily refundable by a third party.

Still, it was a… kind gesture. These inks and this pen are of much higher quality than what I was using previously.

He asked if there was anything more he could do to repay my efforts on his behalf. Again, I thought there was something specific he wished to hear, but as I had no idea what it was, all I could offer was the truth – the whole matter has been an excellent opportunity to learn all sorts of things I would never have explored at home. Some of the behaviours I’ve adopted, the ways I’ve changed, would be fatal at home. Harper suggested that they may simply render me more adaptable and unpredictable.

After offering his opinion, however, he rushed to devalue it. I’m still uncertain how genuine his self-deprecation was. I had thought he was jesting, and attempted to play along; it fell very flat. As, to be fair, do most of my few attempts at humour.  But it doesn’t make sense for him to truly believe he knows nothing, or nothing of worth; it’s too obviously not the case. I might as credibly claim to be a small and moulding grapefruit.

Something of the same kind recurred when I suggested a potential solution to the problem of Celeste’s whereabouts was too simple. He claimed to be a simple man, and when I said “Not that simple”, it did not appear to be taken as the accurate and gratifying assessment I had intended. Is it because he associates complexity of thought with my order and myself, of which he has no very high opinion? Or does he really believe he’s stupid?

(to be fair, on occasion he is, but so is everyone if you catch them off-guard. The trick is always in the manipulation of circumstances)

He’s certainly intelligent enough to reach the same conclusions I do independently: both about the use of _sending_ to Cort to ascertain if he and Celeste are returning, and about that silver vial, Shay, Yurtrus and plague.

… If Harper had any idea how many hours of thought, how many pages, how much ink I’ve expended in the cause of deciphering him, he would become entirely insufferable.

_[scribbled in the margin: JUST KISS HIM ALREADY! In another hand, immediately under it: Final warning, Jadesa]_


	17. Codex #17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was an underwater adventure!  
> There was something very unsettling!  
> Actually, there were several very unsettling things, including a discussion of this thing you call love, a stammering cleric, a vision from Yurtrus, and evidence of another god back from the dead...

 

…variant of the abesh-Re dream – at least, it was there. There were grasslands, stretching out endlessly beneath a hard white sky, wavering in the heat. The Thirsty lay partially hidden in the grass, in the form of the small cat; her fur patchy with scars, and one of her ears shredded. The tip of her crooked tail twitched idly. The abesh-Re plummeted down from the sky as though stooping to a kill. It struck, and the ground cracked beneath the impact. I saw that it had landed on the wildcat. Its talons were buried deep in her shoulders, and it spat a frayed brown feather from its beak. There was blood, but the Thirsty purred. The sound filled the air, and the broken ground trembled.

The abesh-Re had my eyes, as always, but I was the ground. I felt it all through me, and it was not something I could sustain. As the Thirsty raced away, the abesh-Re clinging to her shoulders, I began to crumble, tearing apart in slow, absolute violence. I began to fall in dismembered chunks and fragments, into the river of fire that waited beneath – and this, too, was me… I was both burning earth and devouring fire. Long aeons passed. In the end, there was nothing left except the wind, blowing ashes and charred feathers under a blood-red sky…

… Neither of those truths are anything new.

Aphaesa once mentioned that her mother had been intentionally bred to an outsider; I’ve heard the practice isn’t uncommon among slavers who value extraplanar blood in their stock. Certainly there are fire genasi enough among the clerics of Kossuth, if she ever made it that far. Still, the planetouched are not common; I’m not surprised none of my allies immediately knew the air genasi who accosted us for what he was. Nor am I surprised that it was agreed we would do his errand for him. He said that since he could not breathe underwater, he needed some more capable people to locate and claim a lost treasure on the sea floor near Arrabar.

It should be noted that according to most texts I’ve read, the air genasi do not need to breathe like other races. Their innate elemental affinity can sustain them indefinitely without an external source of oxygen. If accurate, this renders his stated reason for requiring our aid void. However, it seems a foolish lie when he could as easily have excused himself due to inexperience, inability to swim, lack of a boat, or half a dozen other equally plausible grounds; it might well be genuine. None of my texts had enough of a sample size to provide reliable evidence one way or another.

Jorran invited himself along on the underwater expedition. It matters little to me – _water breathing_ can cover up to ten people without requiring constant attention – but it seems ridiculous that someone who spent most of their last combat being wrestled out of the way by _Katy_ should so eagerly place himself in harm’s way again. Still, I know how powerful the thirst for knowledge can be, and what foolish things one does to quench it. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. It’s rather more interesting how easily Harper accepted it.

Katy was in fine form this morning. I understand that sorcerer magic is largely governed – if that’s the correct word for something so haphazard and individualised – by the strength of the sorcerer’s personality. By that measure, she’s certainly as powerful as she likes to claim; Jorran didn’t stand a chance. In the space of about twenty minutes – with some minor assistance from Harper – she’d talked him into knots, in and out of his outer robes twice, through a measuring session that was clearly unwelcome and uncomfortable, and into allowing her to find him a ‘swimming costume’. And then she got started on his sexual and/or romantic preferences; when she enquired about his thoughts on baldness, I thought initially she was attempting to pander for me as she did for Harper with the stable elf. Fortunately, she was only attempting to ascertain if Jorran had any interest in the air genasi.

Eventually she agreed to go off shopping – alone, which should have been adequate warning for the horrors she eventually returned with – and the rest of us went to the temple of Waukeen. I believe the invitation was intended solely for Harper, as Jorran appears intent on making his brother pray, but neither of them raised any objection when Shay and I accompanied them.

It’s a small place, the temple of Waukeen in Arrabar, rather less ostentatious than one might expect to appease the goddess of trade and wealth in a primarily mercantile city. Whatever her adherents might be doing with the offerings they collect in her name, it isn’t advertising.  Shay wandered around, looking at what decoration there was, while I did something similar from a pew; Jorran and Harper knelt in front of the altar.

They were still for some little time, while I reflected on the unfortunate tendency of my allies to become entangled in the schemes of the gods. Then Harper bolted upright, in evident shock. He stammered some excuse to Jorran, then hurried out of the temple.

While he evidently dislikes being followed and asked to explain what the problem is when he removes himself from a situation – a conjunction that’s been occurring more and more frequently of late, and an attitude that I generally share – I went after him. I wasn’t certain how close to approach without being overly intrusive, or what to say. Thinking about it now, I’m not even sure what prompted me in that particular instance, but I think the instinct was sound. Although he looked somewhat bemused to see me, he didn’t ask me to leave him in privacy. In truth, it reminded me a little of the night I sent him into Celeste’s _dream_ … that tumult of semi-connected sentences, the uncertainty, the fear. If I understood him correctly, he’d attempted to pray to Waukeen, despite being out of practice and dubious about the matter anyway, and had heard the laughter of Vhaeraun in his mind.

Which is indeed troubling.

Harper suggested it might be a symptom of decreasing sanity – which, to be fair, might afflict anyone who travelled with us – but I’m uncertain if he was serious, or sarcastic, or if he considered it a more palatable alternative to the ongoing involvement of Vhaeraun. Certainly at one point he started off answering me and ended up yelling at the deity, which is not an entirely sane response by any measure.

Then, of course, as this was a conversation with Harper, he twisted it around on me. In one moment I was assuring him that I would not tell anyone else of his experience in the temple; the next was some form of jest on the subject of me incinerating him as a precautionary measure; then he was asking me whether we were friends and whether that was a word I was interested in understanding.

Personally, I haven’t used it since I was about eight, when Se-atma began to see exactly what he could do with his power over the rest of the clique. He kept using it, especially about me, for some years after that… right up until his death, actually. But it would be disingenuous to pretend I thought Harper and Se-atma were using the same definition of the word; they haven’t much in common beyond that unfortunate tendency to touch. I’m not sure exactly what Katy means by it either: something like ‘person who I like and give pebbles to’, and there seem to be a great many people whom that describes.

On one hand, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of use in acquiring further terms to describe emotional attachments. I know what I feel, much as it troubles me on occasion; I know that, contrary to what I so confidently asserted to Harper, I have made more than one decision recently based purely on emotional grounds. I suppose I could argue that it is properly self-preserving in some degree: in preventing or amending their pain, I protect myself from feeling any shadow of it, or from failure… Empathy, pteh. Of all the disorders to contract… But it’s too late now.

In any case, it’s a spurious argument, all of it. Since when did I, a Red Wizard and a diviner, choose _not_ to learn? Even when the lessons are taking me further and further away from what I was, from anything that is suited to survive my home?

Having thought this far through, perhaps I would have spoken. However Shay turned up, and then Jorran; we returned to the inn. There we found Katy practically bubbling over with excitement. She had found exactly what she was looking for, and by all the powers of the Infinite Abyss, they are _hideous_. Black, and tight to the skin – I have no idea how she learnt the shape of my body underneath these robes and the very idea makes me my fingertips itch – and the only small mercy is that the one she intends for me has a long neck and sleeves…

… I dreamed I was going home. I walked through the training grounds beside Lake Umber, toward the eastern entrance. I held in my left hand three chains. Their links were small, ornate, and shone like fresh blood. The chains led into the lake. When I tugged them, the lake drained away and three slaves came up out of the dusty crater that remained. They moved like slaves – that quick, scurrying gait, with lowered head and hunched shoulders. Filthy, matted, overgrown hair, tatters and rags, scars, iron collars locked about their necks, leashes in my hand. The recurring.

None of them spoke. The chains pulsed with a sickly grey light, to a doubled rhythm like an unsteady heartbeat. Each pulse was cold and stabbing; I could see my hand blacken, frostbitten, around them. I looked up at the towers and spires of my academy. They changed beneath my gaze – from stones and mortar into glass, and then into sand which crumbled into piles, eroded by the wind from the empty lake.

The Erratic spoke. She said: ‘It’s over. Don’t you feel better?’…

I wasn’t expecting that – _why_ are there so many reminders suddenly? It was ten years ago, and I thought I had it under control, and there is no reason why I should feel so raw out here, where nobody knows what they’re evoking, where it’s all coincidental instead of malicious…

Control. Calm. There is no reason to believe that I’ve really betrayed myself as of yet, although I never thought I had Harper deceived. Order.

Today was a long and trying day, and not at all in the manner I’d expected when I made my preparations this morning. When I went down for breakfast, I found Katy (in her version of the awful swimming costume) haranguing Jorran again – he’d chosen to avoid further interrogation on her favourite topic by the simple expedient of spending the night at the estate. Simple, but strictly temporary… and after Katy had had enough, Harper took a turn. That’s less explicable; I have no idea whether he was motivated by genuine interest in whatever the truth is, a desire to indulge Katy, or some petty revenge. It took some time before I was able to approach Jorran and hand him a _sending_ scroll, which I’d prepared so he could contact Cort and ascertain whether he and Celeste were intending to return. While nothing could be further from my wishes than to nag him on the same point that Katy and Harper were so persistent about, I also gave him a piece of advice. Namely, that he could give Katy a story that she would accept; she’s barely touched the subject with me since I spoke about Nebastis. I believe he heard that as ‘tell a plausible lie’, which wasn’t quite how I meant it, but if he has any of Harper’s skill in deception, he should be able to get Katy off his back easily.

We took ship out to the area marked on the genasi’s map – one of the Ferryman family assets, apparently. It was not a particularly pleasant trip. I learned on our journey from Thay that, for all her virtues, Shay deals poorly with the motion of a ship; on this occasion, so did I. Nerves, possibly. Shay’s remedy did settle my stomach somewhat, but unfortunately could do little for the fact I had to deal with the swimming costume. I swear that the pile of black fabric had a very unpleasant expression in its creases when we reached our destination and I could not put it off any longer.

It’s not that I’m body-shy – I am not blind, I have nothing to be embarrassed _about_ , and if the scars Se-atma and Khaseth left might be accounted flaws, they now denote survival and as such I value them. But I felt absurdly vulnerable, walking out onto the deck of that ship without the familiar weight of my robes about me – exposed and ill-armed. Nobody has seen me wear so little since that semi-tryst with Pyrias, and then at least I knew exactly how he would react and exactly what I needed to do, and exactly how little it would matter in the end… not that he didn’t surprise me with his determination to get down to business. I should have paid more credence to the Academy gossip about his predilections.

In any case, it was a considerable relief to slip off the side of the ship – away from Katy admiring her handiwork and Harper determinedly looking away from me – and _polymorph_ myself into a giant shark.

I am partial to _polymorph,_ and justifiably so, I think; it is by far the most versatile spell in my repertoire. The proper choice of form for oneself renders spells like _fly_ or _invisibility_ almost moot, and for a foe, can neutralise them completely – at least for a time. Not that there isn’t a place for more specialised magic, of course, but _polymorph_ can be usefully employed in most circumstances. There are other benefits, too. The form influences the mind within… not much, not to the degree of those wild stories one hears of mages who change their shape and become the beast so thoroughly that they lose their magic. The effect is noticeable, though – a softening, a quietening of all that would not naturally concern whatever form one is in at the time, a corresponding sharpening of whatever does. When I went flying as an owl, the night after Shay was petrified, the knowledge of failure and the racing of my thoughts diminished, as the concentration of flight and the awareness of the night around me increased. I think… I imagine… that dreamless sleep might have a similar effect.

Then, too, the spell dulls some forms of sensory perception. You notice it most with pain, which is doubtless why the spell was designed that way. It would serve little purpose to shift into a form suitable for battle if you had to experience the full effect of its injuries; you’d never be able to sustain the spell. But it also functions that way for touch – not that you’re unaware of it, but the spell energy serves as a buffer between you and the stimulus, like a very thick robe. I would find it exceedingly difficult, in my own flesh, to have Jorran and Nepotyna in such close proximity; as a giant eagle – and one focused on speed and pursuit, at that – it gave me barely a qualm to bear them on my back.

As a giant shark, vulnerability was the last thing on my mind, and it was simplicity itself to tow Shay as we dove, and a positive pleasure to tear into the sahuagin, merrow and giant eels we encountered. In fact – to be quite honest – the eel was delicious. One day I will sit down and work through the theory, discover what happens to any extra mass ingested while _polymorphed_. That eel was longer than I am tall, and considerably heavier…

I will never cease to be grateful for how the imposition of order and an attempt at a coherent account settles the perturbed mind – academic curiosity was far beyond my reach when I began this entry.

The fish were guarding the entrance of the discarded shell of a dragon turtle – a gargantuan thing covered with the silt of ages. It had been a merfolk city once, so the genasi told us, but when its queen learned that her kingdom was lost, she collapsed her palace upon herself and her family and subjects, preferring a slow death by starvation to anything her enemies might inflict upon her. It had seemed the sort of tale Katy would value, although she seemed uninterested in it. Perhaps she found it lacking in erotic content.

In any case, when we eventually found a way down into the wreckage, we did indeed find treasure. I let _polymorph_ drop, so as to assess it for magical traps. Both the presence of a clear problem and the time spent as a shark aided considerably in ignoring the sensation of being so exposed, although I was terribly awkward in movement. There’s a considerable difference between a swimming shark, the mistress of her environment, and an unpractised and unathletic wizard with _water breathing_ flailing her limbs and hoping for the best. Nevertheless, there were no traps, and I was able both to assist Harper in claiming the gold, and to use my _mage hand_ to retrieve a magical sword from where it was embedded in a giant sea urchin.

It appeared that it had been sustaining the creature somehow, for it died when the sword was removed. Curious, especially since when I cast _identify_ and examined the sword’s magical properties, I saw nothing that should have had that effect. It was unusual, though – it had been imbued with rage, grief, despair, and more… everything that merfolk queen felt as she decided upon her course of action and until her death is trapped within that sword, and is magically inflicted upon both its wielder and the foe whose blood it tastes. I explained that to Harper, who shrugged it off as ‘hurt feelings’. I thought he was merely speaking lightly, as he does; I didn’t realise he genuinely didn’t understand what I meant until we were confronted by a dragon turtle who wished us to return its hoard.

Context is everything; on its own it would have seemed an immense creature, but we were all within the shell that had once housed a city. When we did not immediately relinquish its treasures, the dragon turtle attacked. Harper was the first to react, dealing it a mighty blow with that unfortunate sword. Well, apparently dragon turtles are not used to coping with magically-imposed emotion; it hung motionless in the water, apparently stunned. As did Harper.

He usually listens when I tell him things he needs to know. Nine Hells, he usually listens well enough to hear what I’m not saying, and to deduce truths I didn’t want him to know. It was an uncharacteristic lapse, and one I’ll amend when I can – preferably before he does himself serious damage with that thing. Particularly with the potential of meeting his sekhme-at on the horizon, unnecessary erosion of his foundations and defences – whichever – is to be avoided.

In any case, the dragon turtle was simpler to slay than I might have imagined. It only managed to breathe steam once, which helped, although that was enough to put Jorran in urgent need of stabilisation. After a brief and awkward interlude – Shay harvested certain parts of the creature that interested her, and then conceived the foolish notion to cram herself down its throat – we returned to the surface, I was able to get back into my robes, and we sailed back to Arrabar.

We attracted attention when we returned to the tavern – Katy was still parading around in that ridiculous suit – including the genasi merchant. The man is revoltingly prone to overblown flattery – the sort of thing that Jarnath favoured, but without the sarcasm or the assumed superiority. If he hadn’t been so persistently trying my patience and stomach – “magnificent specimen of womanhood”, for the sake of all that is sane! – I might have been better able to maintain my composure when Katy –

Harper dragged Jorran upstairs while Katy and Shay permitted the genasi to buy drinks for them, and I kept a guard on everyone’s tongue. Eventually Katy agreed to play cards with him. As it seemed she would certainly lose all her money if left to her own devices, I joined in their poker game. Maybe it was because I was already wearied by the flirtation, but I didn’t see the cards hidden in his sleeve. Katy did.

Then she sent her _mage hand_ rummaging through his clothes.

I heard it, I heard them, I _felt_ it, all of them, everything compressed into one hideous instant. I have no idea if I said anything. I don’t really remember how I got away from the table. I do know I met Harper on his way down the stairs as I fled. I had enough self-possession to be mostly coherent, I think, although I was unable to convince Harper that I was fine… I have never been a good liar, certainly not when caught between wanting to scream, to vomit, to claw my own skin off if it only it would _help…_

 _…_ Shay has just been here. She wanted to check on me before she settled herself for the night. My wastet-le has always been perceptive, and I am glad she did not ask what had unsettled me so. I still believe – intellectually – that I owe her that truth if ever she asks for it, but if she had asked _now…_ I don’t think I could have told her. Well. I’m not sure I can speak of it in any case, only that there are circumstances under which it might be _necessary_ , and if they should arise, I will have to try.

What I did speak of was not easy, either. I asked her what she had meant when she said she loved me. She said: “As far as I know, and also from the little I can remember, it’s that… it’s that I care for you a great deal, and I would - even without our obligations, without our duties - I would protect you with my life. In whatever capacity, whatever way I can. That your wellbeing matters to me.”

I don’t know quite what I was expecting, or exactly what I’d been afraid to hear. It seemed… both more and less weighty, put that way, than the original phrase. More, certainly much more than the way one hears Katy use it: she loves Harper, she loves her horse, she loves pancakes… Less, in that it was, after all, quite simple? Not so very much more than the ‘I care about you’ I admitted to Harper? But it was, in the end, something I could honestly tell Shay in return – the first time I have ever done so…

…I was in Mistress Kharzura’s office, and as small as I was the first time I was summoned there. Towering over the other side of the desk sat the Erratic and the Silent. The Thirsty was behind me, her hands heavy and tight on my shoulders. I don’t know whether she was trying to be supportive or if she was holding me in place. The Erratic was speaking in a language I could not understand – vehemently, and her gaze locked on mine – and the words curled from her mouth as green vines. Beside her, The Silent watched me as carefully, but said nothing. Something like seawater with a thin current of blood poured slowly from the wound in his throat – not as a small seeping, but as a thick, viscous liquid. Where the vines and the fluid met, they burned, leaving only a pile of ash. The pile grew, then moved as if stirred by invisible hands. It spun through the air, and into a shape, something like a small, bedraggled owl. The Thirsty’s grip grew tighter; I could hear my bones start to crack beneath her hands, and the Erratic kept speaking, and the Silent kept watching me. I knew that all of this was designed to force me into saying one thing. Instead I said ‘No’, and the ash lost form and blew into my face. It blasted my eyelids away, burnt away my eyes…

I can’t make much of this. Some aspects are familiar: Mistress Kharzura’s office and its connotations of authority and power, the chance to win a place and approval; the Silent and his wound, blood and seawater and ashes; the loss of power and agency, between my eyes and my age. I remember one or two dreams in which the Erratic’s words manifested, but the owl… that’s new.

I’m surprised I slept at all. Between the physical exertion and the non-physical stressors, I suppose I was just exhausted. And now I am hiding, putting off the moment where I have to go downstairs and see just how much they learned from my pathetic display of weakness…

… I didn’t last long. The others were making plans for the day – Shay wants to restock her alchemy supplies, and Katy to buy the furniture necessary to redecorate the Ferryman estate. She also complained about how her insistence on learning the details of Jorran’s romantic experience had led him to believe she had been sexually assaulted. I don’t see how that follows at all, nor was it a topic of conversation I wanted to see explored. And then the genasi came downstairs, and offered to make breakfast.

I had nearly finished the tasteless oatmeal provided, and I wasn’t inclined to remain where the genasi’s comments could slice further into the veneer of self-control I’d managed to pull over myself. That, of course, was something Harper noticed, and he asked for a word. In the corner of the public room of a tavern, barely out of earshot of our companions, which was obviously the perfect venue for discussing _anything_. Fortunately, he didn’t pry too deeply. He noted that I seemed ‘grumpier’ than usual, he accepted my previously-established dislike of innuendo as reason to be ‘grumpy’ around the genasi, and offered to kill him for me. As if I couldn’t handle that myself, if I’d thought it useful, or worth doing, or if that had been the sharpest thorn in the tangle… I suppose it was kind of him, but I am more grateful that he did drop the matter there. At least, for now. I’m quite certain he’s seen more than he should have, and that this will surface again.

Perhaps, by the time it does, it will be less raw, and I will know what to say to convince him _not_ to pursue it too far.

They are going about their business now, leaving me alone in this rented room for a while. Probably until one of them needs my assistance, and that familiarity is… something of a comfort. It is so much clearer, so much more understandable than this quicksand mess of alliance and emotion…

[the following pages are a mixture of spell diagrams, angry scribbles of no discernible function, and two graphics that appear to be refined versions of the possible tattoo design noted some pages back]

… See. I am a diviner after all. Harper came and got me to oversee Jorran using the _sending_ scroll to contact Cort. He said no more about the morning and my attitude; possibly I was more successfully composed, but I think it more likely that he was unsettled by the prospect of even vicarious contact with his sekhme-at. I went over the message with Jorran, making sure it included all the relevant details, then asked Harper if he was certain he wished to be present. I have no idea, really, which tack I should be encouraging – whether it is possible or desirable to desensitise himself against the actual presence of his sekhme-at by these indirect exposures, or whether it is just eroding whatever strength he might have gathered. Whether it will make any difference in the end.

It never has for me.

In any case, he elected to stay, and Jorran successfully cast the spell. We learned that Cort and Celeste were about three days’ sailing from here, and that they were returning. Harper heard this, and bolted. As we had done before, Jorran and I followed. We found him slumped against his door. Jorran, like myself, was rather at a loss as to what to do – he was babbling encouragingly of how this was perfectly normal and how Harper would feel better after some food and drink. While I… well, I supposed I encouraged Jorran along those lines, but I was struck by the resemblance between Harper’s posture at that time and how he’d looked in the _dream_ ; his wound was not visible as it had been there, but it was obviously bleeding, and even though it had not been precisely a divinatory dream, the repetition was too striking to be ignored.

I knew.

I offered him my hand.

He stared at it like he’d never seen one before and wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then he grinned at me – possibly the widest, most joyful expression that ever made a person look like a witless fool – and took it. It can’t have been much aid in getting him up, because he put no weight on me at all, but nevertheless, it was effective in lifting his mood somewhat. Then, of course, he made one moronic comment after another – his mother? Really? – and it made for a very quiet lunch.

When we reached the Ferryman estate, we found Shay and Katy already there. Katy had verbally battered Shay into a stupor, by all appearances; she was very enthusiastic about her plans to redecorate. I asked her about her progress with discovering why and how the kirin had been bound.

She told me, essentially, that it was more important to refurnish the Ferryman estate, and if I wanted the kirin research done, I should do it myself.

I know we are not in Thay. I know our alliance is not precisely the teacher/student relationship I am used to. Nevertheless, the sheer disrespect staggered me for a moment. If one of us had answered an instructor so at home…My pride is not so fragile that I need to insist on the proper courtesies. Still, in conjunction with other developments, I think this must be addressed. It wasn’t the time to do it then, and I need to reflect on the matter further first. Instead, I let Katy go about her business, to an extent. We ran into difficulties almost immediately, when she spoke of discarding books from the library which had become mouldy.

Honestly. As though a book was not worth the trifling effort it would take to cast a cantrip and clean it. I sent Jorran for the inventory before he actually experienced an adverse cardiac event at Katy’s behaviour, and we set about cleaning and ordering the library…

… asked Jorran if he would assist me in looking into the matter of the kirin. Of course I would have preferred Katy to handle it, especially since I’m not certain it’s my own curiosity prompting me rather than something the creature imposed on me. Nevertheless, we’d made good progress in the library, and the thought of something more interesting than the casting of _prestidigitation_ ten times a minute was very tempting. After getting a key from Harper to lock the library – which might not have been sufficient to keep a very determined Katy out of it in our absence – we went out into the streets of Arrabar. As I’ve come to expect, this was the signal for Jorran to launch into a rambling semi-lecture on a disconnected variety of trivia.

The plan was to ask at his temple first, and hopefully get an oral account that would help us narrow down our researches in the library of a Lady Maybury. As it turned out, we could dispense with the latter.

Jorran thought the High Prelate in the temple of Waukeen might have the knowledge we sought. Possibly it was the customary respect one pays to one’s superiors, but if so, it was fortuitous. She pretended at several points that we had reached the limits of her knowledge on the subject, and told direct lies at others, but between my persistence and Jorran vouching for me (note: he’s either a better liar than I’d thought, or even more naïve than Katy, to convincingly describe a known Red Wizard as a ‘trusted friend’ – especially on the basis of so brief an acquaintance) the priestess eventually came out with something that sounds like the truth.

The priestess attempted to swear us to secrecy on the matter, which Jorran did willingly. I assured her twice that I knew how to hold my tongue. Either she didn’t notice that was not any true agreement, or some of her commentary upon it was intended as a subtly courteous threat. No matter. There is nobody I can imagine wanting to tell; the only person who might be interested is Katy, and chances are her short attention span will prevent her from ever asking. Even if she did, she had every opportunity to learn about this herself. She chose ignorance instead; she will have to be satisfied with that as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps she’ll go after Jorran, but my sense of the matter is while he may be pliable enough, he would take his promise to the High Prelate seriously.

Idle speculation. The circumstance will not arise in the near future.

Arrabar, it seems, is under the direct patronage of Waukeen – in fact, that’s what enabled the city to survive and rebuild after the Spellplague and what it did to most of Chondath. Some seven or eight hundred years ago, the kirin was bound to the shoreline by the Archprelate in order to provide some protection to the city and to replenish and sustain the local wildlife, thereby enriching Waukeen’s faithful. This was done by Waukeen’s will and decree, as the High Prelate phrased it – basically, the binding was placed by a deity, even if through a mortal’s hands. So the binding itself is of little interest to me – it’s not a replicable feat by any means within my reach, even if I studied it further – and even if Katy had bothered to do the research herself, it’s most likely beyond her ability to break. It’s a dead end, as I’d suspected it would be.

Jorran was absolutely appalled that his deity was responsible for ‘entrapping an innocent creature’ for ‘the benefit of the city’.  I’ve rarely seen someone look so horrified or so despondent. As I said, naïve and ill-educated - it seems he was under the impression that Waukeen and her servitors were interested in protecting the helpless or some such nonsense, instead of the flow of trade and the enrichment of her devotees. I suppose, like Shay, he was never taught to question, or to challenge his superiors. Still, it’s unsettling to see that sort of ignorance. It doesn’t seem real that anybody could think that way; I keep waiting for the façade to drop, then coming across yet another trait that indicates no, that’s actually genuine. Like how he stopped virtually on the temple steps to verbalise his shock that his order and his goddess would be involved, and I had to point out that his superior had sworn him to silence on the subject he was now discussing in public and practically within her earshot.  

Thankfully I only had to do that once, then we started down toward the beach where the kirin was bound. As Jorran had taken an interest in the creature, I thought it only fitting that he meet it – although I intended to send him into its lair alone, so that I didn’t have that anodyne fog invading my mind. He didn’t take immediately to the idea, although eventually he decided he could apologise to it. Why, I’m not certain. He wasn’t involved in binding it in the first place; possibly he meant as a representative of the order and the interests that had, but in order for that to make any sense, he’d need to break the secrecy the High Priest asked of him. Well, it’s a moot point.

We were barely in sight of the waves before I was subjected to an infernal burst of mental static, like someone maliciously jogging my elbow in the middle of a delicate alchemical procedure, or yelling at me while I was chanting. In among all the irritation was the sound of Katy yelling something like a summons. It took a few moments of dedicated concentration to clear my mind, and then Jorran had a hand on my arm and was asking if I was all right or if I had a headache.

Another person who can’t keep their hands to themselves. How wonderful. I’ll have to deal with that should the problem arise again.

I _sent_ to Shay, as I thought it unlikely I would get a coherent answer from Katy within the 25-word limit; she said [our translators are arguing with the decryptors over this word: see notes below], it’s Yurtrus. He wants me to go. Also Katy has a third eye now.

So we’d received our orders, as I’d thought we might. I explained to Jorran that I needed to head back, but pointed out where the kirin could be found if he was still inclined to pursue that matter. He insisted on accompanying me back to the estate instead, ostensibly because I might have needed help. It was somewhat inconvenient – I would have _polymorphed_ myself into something considerably faster if I’d been unaccompanied, but since I’d told Harper I’d take care of his brother, I couldn’t really leave him by himself.

When we returned to the estate I verified that Shay had received a vision and that we needed to leave, and told her I could take us through to Silverymoon as soon as she was ready. Katy was reluctant – she wanted to wait and meet Celeste – and Harper was… subdued. I asked Katy for the sending stone she’d been carrying (which would have been a much clearer way to contact me than whatever it was she actually did) and passed it over to Jorran. I’ll give mine to Harper when I have a chance; he might have left his home again for Shay’s sake, but he can at least remain in contact with his brother if he chooses.

I explained to Jorran what had happened as Harper went to pack. He expressed his concerns over the influence Yurtrus was exerting over us – fair – and offered to come with us to repay his debt and to be of aid. That part I hadn’t expected, and while experience has demonstrated he isn’t particularly hardy in the field, still it seemed reasonable that he might be useful – as someone with more experience dealing with deities, if nothing else. Another moot point, as it turned out; Katy suggested that someone ought to be there to greet Celeste and her guardian when they returned, and evidently Harper agreed with her. So Katy and Shay wished Jorran farewell, as did I, along with some parting advice on the matter of the kirin. He was noticeably less coherent when speaking to me; possibly he took some exception to the various means I suggested in order to circumvent the secrecy he'd sworn, if he was interested in doing so.

Eventually, with the horses in hand, I cast _teleportation circle_ and we emerged in the middle of the main square of Silverymoon – apparently a popular circle, judging by the other parties we saw exit it. It makes Anishta Daraam’s claim not to know of any all the more intriguing. We rode as far as we safely could, and have encamped.

I took a moment to speak with Shay.  We spoke of the vision she’d been sent as a summons – the orc Razgug looking at her. His eyes were the opaque white that denotes blindness, and his skin was pallid and lifeless; when he raised his arm and pointed at her, both skin and flesh began to slough off and liquefy. He said her name, and his jaw dropped off. He dissolved into a putrescent puddle, and she heard a voice like rushing wind and running water tell her to go.

It’s very hard to look past what seems to be the literal and obvious meaning. Mistress Kharzura spent so long training me to consider other possibilities and connotations of dream-imagery, she’d be disappointed that all I can think about is plague. But blindness, disease… dissolution, a person rendered into liquid… changes? Surrender of personality, will?

I offered to scry Razgug for her, in hopes that might shed some light. The spell didn’t twist on me – at least, not the way it tended to in the Underdark – but the result was… unusual. I saw a murky, purulent? liquid running down the side of a well. The sky was hazy with smoke, and there was violence of some kind – maddeningly unclear. Shay wasn’t certain if it was the same well as she’d dreamed before, and she was not inclined to discuss it further.

I asked her about how she had called me [the same word contested previously]. She told me that it had seemed ‘right’ to her, asked both if she’d overstepped and if I would permit her to use it. I… well, like so many others recently, it’s not a word that I’d ever imagined myself using, or allowing. It wants thinking over, as I told her; I also said I had no objection to it, as long as she didn’t say it where it could be overheard by others from Thay; that would be both difficult to explain and potentially dangerous.

Shay really has been spending too long with Harper: cede one thing with difficulty, and immediately they push it further… [Although encrypted a third way here, the decryptors insist that the word in question is _ahket_. Our Thayan experts insist this must be wrong; it is not creditable that a Red Wizard, even one clearly suffering from the strains of foreign influences and unsuitable alliances, should so far forget the pride due to her lineage and her place in the world so as to permit a half-orc slave to call her ‘sister’. The decryptors state categorically that there is no other translation possible.]…

… I dreamed I stood alone on a plain of smooth black glass. It stretched out forever – there was no end to it, no horizon, no sky. At my feet it threw infinite copies of my reflection. I saw that in each of them I was naked, scarred not only with the physical marks left on my body, but with others. I could not name them all, but I recognised them as mine. Both my arms ended in dripping stumps where my hands should have been. There was a hunger above me. It had no shape or colour, no movement. There was no way to detect it, but I knew it was there and what it wanted.

Then I was surrounded by figures. Many were human or humanoid, but not all of them, and they were not flesh, but something more. I don’t know how the black glass remained whole under the weight of their reality. All were masked, but I can’t describe what the masks looked like – they were not masks that _had_ an appearance, they simply _were_. The figures circled me, and they whispered words that cut and lashed at me. My tongue was too heavy to lift and my eyes were dry. Word after word, until the black glass swallowed my blood, until my skin peeled away and my reflections grabbed it with eager hands and drew it down into the glass.

The scars remained – in fact, there were more of them that my skin had hidden. The figures jabbed and pointed at them as they circled closer, until I couldn’t breathe. Faster and faster they spun about me, and the masks began to change, and the words rose almost into coherence as the hunger howled my name…

… The first thing I did this morning was rub my hands over each other – reassuring myself that they were there and I was covered in skin. It’s been a long time since any dream disturbed me that much.

I estimate Sundabar is a little less than four days’ travel now. Celeste and her guardian are due in Arrabar in two, maybe three, depending on the winds…

… asked Harper if he still wished to speak to me. I think he’d forgotten he’d requested a conversation when I borrowed the library key; certainly we’ve been busy since then. And he’s barely said a word since we left Arrabar, which doesn’t really surprise me. While it wasn’t apparently what he’d originally intended to speak about, we discussed Shay and Yurtrus. It’s not appropriate for me to divulge anything she’s said in private, of course, but there’s nothing preventing me from sharing my personal speculations. I think they have much in common with Harper’s in any case. I also told him about what I’d experienced when I held the silver vial Shay had taken from the erinyes – that’s not privileged information, he might as easily have been the person to pick it up originally.

I also explained – all over again, and in great detail – exactly what the coral sword he’d been using did to its wielder. He _was_ listening this time, and he seemed to understand, but it didn’t dissuade him from fighting with it again. As I’m not inclined to watch him destroy himself with it, I suppose I’ll need to find another tactic. Not tonight.

Harper thought I was angry with him. I suppose I was, in part, but it wasn’t the part that was speaking; Katyish emotional outbursts are too easily dismissed, and I was trying to make my points clearly and to prompt a change of behaviours. I so rarely seem to be able to communicate properly with Harper, though. I told him I didn’t want to see him making stupid choices and ignoring me when I told him things he needed to know. He said he’d try to be more worthwhile in future. I asked him to try, instead, not to speak of himself as though he had no value.

He thought I was concerned whether he’d be useful in Sundabar. I fumbled my way through explaining that it was not about his usefulness, it was about the fact I cared about him and, because of that, disliked hearing him denigrate himself.

I think we’ve had almost that precise conversation before, except that now I spoke his lines, and he mine... What have I become?

He apologised again… genuinely, I think, but it’s difficult to tell. And I know by now that ‘I’m sorry’ means only ‘I feel a certain way about this’; it doesn’t always indicate the determination to change or to make reparation. In any case, I was sufficiently drained by the conversation and the effort to find the correct words in Common that I inadvertently dropped into Mulhorandi and mentioned his sekhme-at. I hadn’t meant to do that, but fortunately he didn’t press the matter. Neither of us, I think, had sufficient reserves for that conversation. I would dislike making him cry again...

Shortly afterwards, we were attacked by a druid, a cleric, and the pack of ettins and goblins they’d been setting on travellers. They were skilled; it was a close combat. Harper looked on the verge of unconsciousness when I _polymorphed_ him into the form of a tyrannosaurus rex; Shay was in fact beaten past that point twice and I had to _misty step_ to her and get a healing potion down her throat before she bled to death. Katy was temporarily banished – I must speak to her about that experience at some point – and I myself had an escape rather narrower than I care to think about.

We attempted to interrogate the dwarf, who was not forthcoming. Fortunately the elven druid kept a very detailed journal. The cleric also had a prayer book on him… it was troubling. It appears he was a devotee of _Cyric_.

Cyric was a god we covered in greater depth than most. His achievement of apotheosis was noteworthy, of course, and his portfolio of murder, lies, strife, intrigue and illusion would naturally attract a Red Wizard’s attention – at least, if he weren’t absolutely and literally _insane_. But the Spellplague is one of the greatest catastrophes to ever afflict Faerûn, and you cannot study it thoroughly without dealing with the fact that he caused it. So, if a cleric of his is wandering around successfully casting divine magic, either he’s serving two gods, or one masquerading as Cyric… or, like a number of other deities we’ve encountered recently, _he is no longer dead_ …

The thought of another Spellplague is one to make any wizard shudder.

 


	18. Codex #18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Choices are made in Sundabar. 
> 
> (also I can't believe it's been more than three months since the last time I wrote one of these; I hope the next doesn't take as long)

…mustered horde on the outskirts of Sundabar. They were poorly equipped and disorganised – very much the sort of thing one expects when orcs and their half-blood spawn start to froth over without a hand on their leashes to direct them to advantage. Such gatherings typically spend themselves against the nearest settlement, if they don’t dissolve in thousands of internal squabbles first.

I hadn’t expected us to reach Sundabar as quickly as we did, and I wasn’t prepared for magical translation; we had to depend on Shay. It was roughly as appropriate as it was uncomfortable. Appropriate, in that we were there for Shay and on her business, so the lead was hers to take, and I’ve certainly used the language barrier to my advantage on occasion in similar situations. Uncomfortable, in that I was standing with Katy in the middle of a broiling war-band without a word of the language, while Shay and Harper were within a tent, out of my sight, talking to its leader.

I _was_ attempting to rectify my lack of information somewhat by casting _detect thoughts_. Of course, that went flawlessly and was a wise investment of spell-energy. The tent-guard asked me why I was wriggling my fingers, and I explained that they were cold. A serviceable enough lie, if Katy hadn’t chimed in that wizards always had poor circulation, and tacked on that I was a poor excuse for a mage who could barely light a fire.  Really. I suppose I should be grateful that the guard preferred to pursue her attraction to Katy than the matter at hand, but by the time all this was sorted out to her satisfaction, the spell was dissipating anyway. I caught only a flicker of thought from inside the tent over the guard’s mental imagery of eating roast horse by a campfire while Katy swooned over her archery prowess.

Eventually Shay and Harper emerged, postponing any discussion until we were further away from the horde. It transpires that it was not, in fact, as disorganised as it looked; the army’s leader took his orders from Abbot Kha-liel of the Long Death Monastery on top of the mountain, who intended to direct them against Silverymoon. Harper and I appeared to agree that the goal seemed supremely pointless. Silverymoon is a well-defended city with good walls, an army that has historically faced worse, and a thoroughly-established magical tradition. On the face of it, the orcs appear likely to smash themselves against Silverymoon with all the impact of a single wave against a granite cliff. This Kha-liel may conceivably have many more orcs at his disposal, a traitor within the city, or access to a piece of information that brings it all into frame, but lacking such a factor, I tentatively concluded that he was simply intending to get them killed. Orcs are always willing to throw their lives away in pointless warfare – it is why they are so useful, although of course the trait has been refined in the blood orc of Thay – and the Long Death can always use bodies.

Harper found a moment to ask if I had _teleportation circle_ ready. Of course I did; like _polymorph_ and _counterspell,_ it is simply too useful to risk being without in most circumstances. He wanted also to make it clear: if or when it became necessary, he would buy me the time to cast the spell and take the others through to Silverymoon, then attempt to join us there. I dislike the proposition. It is too strong a reminder of his belief that he would die in Arrabar. I did agree to do so, although I kept my reservations on the subject to myself.  Firstly, I think – no, that’s rather too strong a word for a belief that has no evidence behind it – my sense is that if events were likely to reach such a desperate pitch as to require Harper’s sacrifice, I would have dreamt it, and the circumstances do not feel familiar enough for that. I have other, half-formed and misshapen images that suggest Yurtus’s involvement in our lives and the choices that may radiate from this point, but they do not fall into that particular pattern… Secondly, Silverymoon is a fairly safe location for Shay and Katy unsupervised, at least for as long as it might take to resolve a situation in a more satisfactory fashion.

We pressed on into Sundabar, which is best described as orcish squalor gradually eroding dwarven workmanship, and soon came upon a well in the centre of a square. I had seen it, when I tried to _scry_ Razgug; Shay had been sent it in one of Yurtrus’s visions. On inspection it appeared surprisingly sound – not that I would drink out of it if I had another option, but I probably wouldn’t have contracted anything too unsightly if I had. Which was, I suppose, what Yurtrus wanted to correct. However, Shay decided to gain more information before proceeding with her assigned task, and we turned away from the well with the vial still in her pocket.

Yurtrus took exception to this. Shay said the vial began to cause her pain, so she placed it in my bag of holding. Apparently the artificial planar space was sufficient insulation; the sensation ceased for her, nor could I feel anything of its pestilential aura exuding through the bag. We began to walk away, and Shay collapsed. Unsurprising; one imagines a god of death and disease has no end of such measures to correct the disobedient. I had no idea how severe Yurtrus might be, and I was afraid she might be dying… even so, I found myself wondering what else she could have expected when she first took up the service of a deity and then defied him.

To my relief, however, she remained conscious, if weak and in pain; Harper carried her to the house of a blacksmith. The dwarf Bemsley was none too pleased at the interruption, but left us alone eventually. Shay explained that Yurtrus wanted the vial emptied into the well immediately, presumably to infect the entire area with plague. She planned first to find Razgug, in the hopes that Yurtrus’s cleric could explain the situation more fully, but was inclined to think that obedience might lead to infecting the monastery and thereby leaving the horde leaderless and disorganised.

She has, as I reckon it – and I am aware that she may well count these things differently – three major loyalties or obligations of various strengths at play in this scenario: the Order of the Long Death; Yurtrus; Harper, Katy and myself (certainly counting us as individuals would be more accurate, but a group is more convenient in this context). Some of Shay’s concerns implied the presence of two other factors: the wellbeing of the orc army and the city of Silverymoon.

At that point, she spoke of infecting the monastery as a desirable outcome, preserving her allegiance to Yurtrus as well as the lives of the horde and the city. I have known for some time that she was thinking about defection, but it was nonetheless something of a shock to hear those concerns placed ahead of the Long Death. The order might well value the chance to study a plague birthed in such unusual circumstances, and consider the infection and deaths of its own members convenient towards that end. That was not Shay’s consideration. She wanted it destroyed.

I don’t say she had fully realised how her values had shifted at this point; sometimes these things are difficult to see, even if one is accustomed to introspection and self-questioning. Look at all the pages of ink I’ve spilled here, talking to myself, and I still don’t understand exactly what I am becoming, or how, or what to do about it…

In any case, she was set on going to the monastery in search of Razgug, or of answers. So we followed the winding path up the mountain. Shay was able to explain herself satisfactorily to the guards and we passed them without incident. The monastery, when we found it, appeared much the same as Shay’s: macabre decorations on dwarven stonework, the scent of decomposition (slightly lesser in this colder environment), the monks intent on impressing one with the importance and grandeur of their chosen course of study, and a garden comprised of plants that were poisonous, diseased, or both.

We were shown to the ‘guest quarters’, which I have not experienced before. It does feel rather like home, although the monks use more mechanical means to remind one to be wary. When Harper pointed out the first pressure-plate, I argued that it should be left alone rather than triggered. An untriggered trap one knows about is considerably less of a risk than a triggered trap which may spray acid, or release toxic spores, or suffocating gasses, or any of the more imaginative means to kill or disable that the monks have at their disposal. I failed to present this argument in sufficiently convincing form, however all it did was spring-release a large spike to impale the chair Harper pushed onto the pressure-plate. Very crude, as were the other traps. Probably the monks save the more exotic or certain methods for when they are serious about killing their guests.

I set up a _tiny hut_ on the stretch of floor about which I felt least apprehensive, as well as _alarm_ spells at the doors and windows. Nothing that would protect us from eavesdropping, either magical or mundane, but the best security I had to offer. When I get the chance, I should look into that spell Nebastis cast with the rope and the extradimensional space. It served us well enough for private discussion…   

Shay intends to seek additional clarification from Yurtrus tonight. I don’t see the point, myself: she was given a task to do and has not done it, and he has not seemed the kind of entity to speak clearly in any case. She also seems determined to destroy the monastery – she has become definite on that point – but can’t seem to articulate why, despite how closely Harper questioned her. She raised that this monastery intends study death on the population level, rather than the individual that she studied in Thay, but didn’t explain why that point was relevant.

She isn’t certain whether she is truly a monk of the Long Death any more. This isn’t exactly news to any of us, but nevertheless, it chimed most unpleasantly against some of the questions I have been struggling with on my own behalf. It made it difficult to do anything more than reassure her that whatever she chose, I would stand with her.

We have come into a hostile environment, to do _something_ our guide feels is urgent, although she can’t explain exactly what it is or why. She seems to be groping blind and hoping that she will recognise the path which leads to what she wants when it’s in front of her feet. It’s exactly what I did to her when I plucked her from her monastery, to come halfway across Faerûn in search of something I didn’t know how to find and wasn’t sure I’d recognise even if it were in my hands. 

She stood with me. I won’t do less for her…

… a vast hall, shadows falling blue and thick despite the elaborate candelabras that stood at intervals along the table. There was music in the distance, a thin, chittering sound like an orchestra of insects playing over something deeper. The voices of those gathered to dine sounded… artificial, as a golem’s voice or a musical instrument is artificial: uninflected, bloodless, unbroken by breath. I could not see them, only the vast expanse of the table that lay ahead of me and beneath my feet.

Slowly and carefully, I skirted plates as high as my waist and tureens that stretched far above my head. Some of them bore cities, others seas, or mountains. I saw a star held in chains and a tear of Selûne in a pool of silver light. I saw a copper bowl that held cobalt and magenta flames, another with a coiled strand of pearls, storm-clouds seething over their lustred surface, and one that had only a sparrow’s heart. I saw a wooden goblet that held vengeances enacted and another that held the names of forgotten loves. This last was nearly empty, with droplets of letters and stray hieroglyphs splashed over the side.

I was moving toward the music, pausing as the diners moved lest I come to their regard. As the shadows fell over me I was something other – transmuted or transposed, each value and thought changed into something similar but different. Bear or statue or azer or thorns, I no longer knew what I was seeking…

… said Yutrus himself came to her. She asked him whose deaths he sought, and when he said ‘All’, announced that she couldn’t do it. Then, apparently, he left her in peace. That won’t be the end of it. Shay was still determined to speak to the Abbot and learn if he had anything planned apart from unleashing orcs and studying the bodies; in a suspiciously convenient manner, he was outside the guest quarters and quite happy to hold forth about his goals.

He appeared honest. Also insane.

The Long Death has always appeared less than practical, to my mind. Certainly their martial skills and knowledge of poisons, diseases, and torture, etc. can be turned to useful ends, but death as a goal in itself is rather missing the point. So sending the war band we’d seen outside the walls to Silverymoon, with the intention of the two forces killing each other so that the monks could study two cities’ worth of corpses, was a grand exercise in futility. Shay questioned him on the point, a little – she seemed rather to be talking at cross-purposes with the Abbot. Either, like myself, the distance from home and the isolation from like-minded individuals is taking a toll, or else the differences between the two branches of the order are greater than I thought.

The Abbot seemed to sincerely believe without question that his orcs alone, lacking any other factor about which I had speculated, would be evenly matched with Silverymoon’s forces: a proposition so absurd that I decided he was not worth engaging in further discussion. This was, of course, the point where Harper and Katy took over. Harper, unsurprisingly, did coax a few interesting tidbits from the Abbot, such as his belief that the monks were sufficient to counter the orcs if they began rampaging in the wrong direction; Katy mostly castigated him on his poor grasp of logistics.

Once she’d been extricated, we walked through some of the monastery, attempting to get an idea of the monks’ numbers, then reconvened our discussion of what in the Hells Shay wanted done – part in the monastery’s guest quarters, and later in the hovel of the dwarf Bemsley.

Shay was… not forward in expressing her wishes, or justifying them. There were numerous dropped threads and contradictions. Eventually decisions were made.

The Long Death: Abbot Kha-liel to be killed and the monastery scoured. Shay has chosen this method of leaving the order, although she hopes to hide her involvement. She wants, in future, to return to Thay to retrieve the dwarf Bran and to destroy her monastery. I don’t think she sees what is glaringly obvious to me about this last point - why it would be virtually impossible and the choice I would have to make. At least, so I hope: either she is thoughtless or my trust is entirely misplaced.

I don’t know what I will choose if I she forces me into that position. I _hate_ the thought of it, and I _hate_ that I don’t know… But I digress. The dilemma will wait, and perhaps may never arise; the situation before us will not.

Silverymoon: To be protected by destruction of the monastery. I _sent_ a warning to Master Drax. His first concern will be himself and his interests, naturally, but it seems to me that his position in the court of Silverymoon would be worth defending, and passing on a potential invasion would assist in maintaining influence. Harper suggested seeking aid with the orc army from the Knights in Silver, but historically they do not move far from Silverymoon. They will defend the city; they are unlikely to march to Sundabar to deal with a threat here.

The orc army: To be turned against the monastery, if the captain may be persuaded by Shay or by _suggestion._ Shay no longer appears concerned with their well-being, which is wise, given that they are very likely to die by in-fighting if neither monastery nor Silverymoon kills them first.

Yurtrus: The vial to be given to the clerics of Mielikki in Silverymoon. Of all the gods with temples in Silverymoon, Mielikki is the most actively opposed to disease, and therefore the vial is likely to be neutralised rather than unleashed. The fact that Katy has been reading Mielikkian poetry to her horse may or may not be coincidental in this context; I note it because it we appear to be actively drawing divine attention from several quarters, and it’s always best to know who’s on the field.

Harper grew noticeably frustrated – or, perhaps more frustrated – with Shay at several points, as she was less than clear about what she wanted or why, and she kept bringing up additional information – such as Bran in Thay - and changing the context completely. I suspect also… well, Shay kept protesting how much the three of us mattered to her, but our safety or well-being did not appear to be a prioritised factor in her decision-making. As was raised several times, we were there only for her sake, and the chances of getting ourselves killed in one unpleasant manner or another here are fairly high. Even assuming our skills continue to prevail, Harper left Arrabar and his concerns there before they were truly settled; I have work and a place waiting for me at home, unless…no. She can take of herself. And Katy… well. I suppose she left a mansion half furnished, for what that’s worth.

Oh, Hells. This is where love leads, is it? Why do the bards keep yammering on about this emotion? I am here on a mountain surrounding by orcs and the threat of a god-plague, or at the very least divine wrath, all because Shay needs me. I fail to see what is so desirable or noble about being puppeteered by the heartstrings. It is awkward, dangerous, occasionally painful and damnably inconvenient.

There was another moment in the discussion that should be noted: I mishandled it and will have to make some sort of amends when the chance arises. The dwarven blacksmith had been snoring upstairs while we talked, and I had mostly ignored it – right up until the moment when Harper and I both realised it had ceased. He went to deal with it, then returned, and Katy asked him if the dwarf was dead. He was not. I hadn’t meant to challenge Harper on his handling of the eavesdropper; I was only surprised. But so he took it, and said to go do something if I disapproved of his methods. Which was not precisely the problem, but under the circumstances...

The dwarf’s death is not a problem. Accidentally challenging Harper in front of the wastet-le is. That is the sort of error that leads to lungfuls of ice, and it is not the first such I have made with him.

I am no stranger to watching my words, to being precise in my meaning – it makes my inability to consistently communicate with him all the more frustrating. To constantly weigh each sentence with only inconsistent and barely-understood ideas of what constitutes offense or challenge or irritation or even invitation to flirtation… it’s not as though it helps, or like I am improving. We keep repeating the same pattern, again and again: first a time when we work in tandem, then I say or do something despite my best efforts – in fact, most often when I am trying hardest – Harper becomes angered or offended, I perceive that I have erred again and attempt to seek clarification and apologise. Frequently I offer something of myself in retribution or explanation, or else a coldness persists until next Harper needs something I can provide.

I don’t know how to break the cycle, but it is wearying and ineffective and I – no. This is tangential at present. As was much of what followed once decisions were made. There was examination of a vial given to Shay by Jorran, which had a very strong abjuration aura. It should also be noted that Celeste and her guardian were due to arrive in Arrabar today (assuming they returned as soon as practical) and Harper showed no interest in asking Jorran about them. In fact, Katy contacted Jorran with the Sending Stone. She learned nothing of value; Jorran does not appear to have mastered the 25-word limitation of the spell and is not a concise communicator at the best of times. Katy and Harper also tried to coach Shay through a conversation with the orc war leader, with Harper simulating him.

Shay was not terribly convincing, which possibly should have served as warning for her actual attempt at persuading the orc that he should lead his army to sack the monastery – the putative protectors of Sundabar – instead of Silverymoon. She explained the monks’ true purpose, what they had done to her, and so on; the captain was disinterested and unmoved until Katy used _prestidigitate_ to create a glowing image of the Eye of Gruumsh behind Shay.

Because we have not already brought ourselves to the attention of enough gods, obviously.

Once the orc thought he was talking to someone favoured by his deity, he was much more amenable to persuasion. And so here we are, in a spare orcish tent in the middle of an army, and tomorrow we will lead them up the mountains – because of course the Herald of Gruush leads his battles herself – to attempt to wipe out a monastery that is full of trained warriors and students of death. This is not the most intelligent move we’ve ever made.

There have been… other developments, too. Harper, although still obviously seething – well, very obviously, the first thing he did after approaching me was state that he was still “a little bit annoyed” with me – has apparently written a letter for me, in case he does not survive this, which is in the bottom of his pack. He didn’t explain further. The questions I asked might have been deemed acceptable if he had not already been out of temper, but as it is, I don’t know what he could want me to know which wouldn’t be safer delivered in person. I am curious, naturally, but I’m not sure it would be wise to pursue this.

The other development belongs to a matter raised first in Skullport, that of Katy’s attraction to Shay. Katy approached Shay to offer encouragement and reassurance, and asked if she could hug her. Shay assented, and also kissed her check; Katy blushed and began to blather, Shay kissed her mouth.

Katy’s reaction was… not what I’d expected. As far as I know (and I am aware that I can rarely predict Katy’s responses, and also that neither of them necessarily approach these matters in the same way I would) that would be a signifier of reciprocated romantic and/or sexual interest – something, in short, that Katy would welcome. Or return. Or… well. Something other than stammer out her thanks, a hope that they would survive to possibly “do that again” and then go lie face down on her bedroll. It must be at least a somewhat unusual or inappropriate response: Harper looked quite as surprised by that aspect as I was, and in fact called out Katy’s name in a reproving manner twice.

It is, of course, none of my business, just as it was not when first I became aware of the attachment. It would be considerably easier to maintain the appropriate tact if they did not insist on conducting themselves so publicly… but then, we are very far from Thay. I do not intend to use this to manipulate, threaten or humiliate them; nor do I believe Harper is inclined to do so. There’s no real harm in them indulging themselves, although it will probably make things more difficult for me further down the line. Should it continue, anyway; Katy’s expressed wish that it should is not very consistent with her actions.

It is not my business. Nonetheless I am concerned enough to spend my time on watch thinking about this instead of the many flaws in tomorrow’s battle plans...

… each scale is a flake of gem or a thin-hammered coin, throwing back the narrow beam of light in a thousand lancing fragments. The serpent shifts its coils around the pillars of the earth. A wooden one snaps and the serpent hisses. The inside of its mouth is dark, its fangs black and almost invisible, and a cloud of venom spreads from its jaws. A pillar of white opal begins to corrode. I stand in my place: my task is to endure as long as I can. I can sense the recurring are near, but I cannot see or recognise them until the Silent approaches the serpent. The Erratic calls him back. The serpent bends down its glittering head as the Silent reaches out a hand.

It sings, one low note that reverberates throughout the world. A pillar of grey stone and a pillar of gold fall. The Silent tears a diamond from the serpent’s head and its note becomes a scream…

… didn’t really cover this in class. Commanding an army, yes. In the advance guard of a horde who are following your wastet-le, believing her to be the herald of their deity, no. We encountered our first resistance on the mountain, approximately at the same altitude where we first saw monks. The ensuing combat was progressing well until new creatures appeared on the battlefield. In appearance, they were not unlike flesh golems, if those had been sewn together from parts of plague-dead orcs by a diseased mind with an unlimited supply of pus. The horde feared them, and they attacked orcs, our party, and monks alike; when one stretched out its hand to an orc, it became one of them.

My surmise is that Yurtrus sent them as a response to Shay’s refusal – whether he intended that such chastisement would kill her or force her back into line. They were not easily dispatched, but eventually it was done. I raised skeletons from five of the slain monks, as a calculated insult. The Long Death loathes and despises nothing so much as the undead, so the animated skeletons of their own would make attract attention and allow us to slip away from the army when we went in search of Kha-liel.

As it turned out, we needed nothing so organised. The charge of an orc horde into the relatively confined spaces of a monastery is sheer chaos, especially when our plans included large amounts of fire and the scattering of magic beans. We were able to find our way to the lower levels, where eventually we came upon Abbot Kha-liel, some monks, and some less-expected foes: tanarukks and large, four-armed fiends of a variety I was unable to identify. It was not a simple battle by any means, but we have won by narrower margins in the past.

We found, in the Abbot’s study, a symbol of Cyric.

It was an ominous sight, and the implications are worse, but I suppose it explains his grasp of strategy somewhat. And at least one of his tactical calculations was correct, as we discovered when we regained the monastery courtyard: the monks were sufficient to counter the orc horde. We did not see a single survivor from either group. Leaving the monastery’s rubble to smoulder, I returned us to Silverymoon.

It is… pleasant… to be on more familiar and civilised ground; the overwhelming scent of flowers is a vast improvement on orcish excrement. I hope that Shay is satisfied with the outcome of our excursion, and that we do not hear too much more from Yurtrus…

… watching a fire, the leaping flames gold and scarlet, elusive flickers of blue around the burning wood. One does not question dreams while experiencing them, but this carried with it an unusual sense of… solidity, almost reality, perhaps because it was initially so simple. I could feel the warmth, smell the smoke. The soft crackling slurred gently into words: _peace, rest. You are enough. You are safe. It is over._  I held out to my hands to the flames, and was unsurprised and unworried when they ignited, when my body wavered into fire. But the fireplace, the room about me were not consumed, and I remained at rest in my chair, watching the flames and of one nature with them, fierce and certain and no longer seeking…


	19. Codex #19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doings in Silverymoon and the Glimmerwood. It appears the party has found some favour in the eyes of the goddess Mielikki, which may or may not be useful given that they're doing their best to be a pain in Cyric's arse. You know, if he still has one. Because he's dead. He's so dead. Please let him be dead  
> and let him stay that way.  
> Khem muses on the difficulties of her relationships with the other members of the party and on her increasing changes.

… offered to send Harper, and those who wished to accompany him, to Arrabar, and deal with our remaining business in Silverymoon myself. Harper shot me a rather suspicious look. There are fairly limited ways I might have used the information I had against him or the others, if I had been so inclined, but as it happened it was genuinely meant: I had thought he’d want to return to his home and siblings as soon as it was feasible. Perhaps I overestimated their respective weight against the presence of his sekhme-at. In any case, he declined.

Shay stated her belief that Yurtrus would not further interfere in her life. She had dreamed of the livid whiteness fading from her hands, a light passing into the distance, an inner change. Well, she may no longer enjoy the dubious benefits of his favour, but as anticipated, that chain was not so easily broken. As we walked to the temple of Mielikki to dispose of the plague-vial, Shay was overcome by illness, culminating in purulent boils when we reached the outer reaches of the giant tree’s root-system.

I hadn’t noticed them. I know I am prone to losing myself in my own thoughts, but to be so very absorbed, so unobservant, that I didn’t see she was under attack? To be such a poor excuse for a kvaleth? I must do better by her, or – no. Admitting defeat would help neither of us. I shall only note, as I have before, that she was much better served by Harper. He sent Katy and I to find a cleric in the temple and bring them to Shay’s aid. Katy ran obediently away squawking, and I refused to leave Shay, but truly, I was superfluous.

Harper helped Shay into the temple – a forest glade within the giant tree, which was incongruous but unsurprising – where its prelate Meriwen healed her. Apparently not without struggle, although it wasn’t a visible one: after the cleric threw motes of glittering dust at her, Shay stood bathed in a beam of silver-blue light until the pustules faded away. Katy explained that the disease was probably recalcitrant because it had been caused by Yurtrus – a name which the priestess recognised immediately and with concern. We retired to a small room to discuss the matter privately. The room, incidentally, was equipped with vines that unfurled from the ceiling at her command. I believe Katy partook of the refreshments on the tray they lowered; others were more cautious. Shay explained the events that had led to her acquiring the plague-vial, the purpose Yurtrus had intended for it, and what she had done instead; the cleric’s assessment of its contents was much the same as mine, and she promised to see it destroyed.

I was forming quite a favourable impression of her sanity before she praised Katy for reading devotional poetry to her horse and invited her to bring the animal to the temple to be blessed. She then gave Katy and Shay silver necklaces with Mielikki’s symbol upon them – to Shay to ‘ward off’ any further interference from Yurtrus, although there was no magic upon them; to Katy because she thought Shay’s was pretty and asked for one – and we left.

We stepped outside. A blowing leaf brushed by Harper: he stopped to pick it up, turned it over in his hands, stared at for a moment, then crumpled it, cast it away, and stormed off wild-eyed. It reminded me rather more of the way he bolted from Waukeen’s temple in Arrabar than the way he bolted from Jorran’s room after _scrying_ Cort and Celeste, although I admit I have no real basis for this. Perhaps it’s only that this, too, was linked to a temple, and running from a leaf strikes me as more likely caused by divine interference than emotional instability. In either case, when I retrieved the leaf and inspected it, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Since Harper has not previously evidenced botanophobia, I’m sure he saw something that I didn’t.

If he seems to be in a mood to answer questions – I know, I might as well wait for a gelatinous cube to sprout wings and breathe lightning…

[ _a small sketch of a gelatinous cube with scaly bronze wings on each corner fills the rest of the page]_

… sent us to the High Lord of Silverymoon, Methrammar Aerasumé – not on quite the same level politically as a tharchion, but as the leader of the Argent Legion and with a number of heroic accomplishments credited to him, not someone to underestimate. He appeared to believe Harper’s reports, and to be quite concerned about the implications. It made a pleasant change, not needing to explain precisely why the Cyricist dwarf successfully using clerical magic is an ill portent. He hadn’t been warned about the orc horde in Sundabar, which meant both that his usual informants had failed (or changed loyalties) and that Master Drax hadn’t passed on the intelligence I _sent_ him.

As Shay and I discovered when I went to report, this was because he left the School of Thaumaturgy and Silverymoon immediately after receiving my warning, and under a cloud of ‘financial irregularities’. I shall be interested to see if our paths cross again. But it should be noted that both he and Lord Aerasumé took the orcs as a credible threat, which neither Harper nor myself did, and Drax knew every detail I could share. This suggests Silverymoon may be much less defended than I assumed.

Once we’d been dismissed, I explained that I needed to go report to Drax. Harper was quite… prickly about it. I was a little worried myself, to be honest: I had passed through Silverymoon without delivering the report I owed him on Arrabar; I had given him information about an imminent orc invasion, and could have made him look foolish when that threat never materialised; I was implicated in information reaching Aerasumé before him, as though my first duty was not to my order. Harper questioned my proposed course of action in much the same way he’d questioned Shay in Sundabar, as though he was waiting for his interrogation to prompt the realisation that I was following a path to destruction for no good reason.

I offered, later, but I’m really not certain how to distil the way the order works into a few simple sentences. Sometimes the most obvious things are the most difficult to explain.

In any case, he was visibly fuming when Shay and I left for the School, and he was still offering jibes on the subject of my need for orders when we met him and Katy at the inn. He also appeared to be searching for reasons to stay longer in Silverymoon rather than returning to Arrabar. Katy proffered one: she was taking her horse to the temple to be blessed. Ridiculous, but sufficient when Harper is stalling, Shay has cut herself free of all the ties of her old life save one, and I am only here to understand the three of them.

Harper apparently wanted to speak to Shay on some matter: as I needed to speak to Katy about her lessons, it worked out well.

Obviously, I didn’t expect it to be as simple as explaining that her behaviour had been disrespectful, and her apologising for this and endeavouring to do better. It would have been pleasant, perhaps: I do care for her, exasperating, enthusiastic child as she is, and I have enjoyed teaching her and seeing her progress. Instead… well.

Part of the problem, as I had expected, was that of context; she is not Thayan and didn’t realise how rude she was being, or didn’t think it mattered. She saw deliberately misnaming the kirin as amusing, not a mocking refusal of offered knowledge.  She said also that she did not realise I was setting her a lesson when I asked her to research the kirin’s binding, or that it was even related to the discipline and control I was attempting to help her develop.

She thought I was trying to exert undue authority over an aspect of her life in which I was not her teacher, and that I had wanted to curb her as one of my instructors might have corrected me for disrespect. My words, not hers, obviously… She accused me of being upset that she’d chosen to pursue her own goal over the task I had set her. I suppose it looked that way, but the truth is more complicated.

It was… surprisingly painful. She was grateful that her wild magic surges had lessened, but she did not want to emulate or ‘become’ me; she didn’t think she needed further instruction in her magic; she was uninterested in learning anything else from me; she respects me but won’t necessarily reflect that in a way I’d recognise, including listening to me. She wants to spend time together as friends, and for me to continue only in that role. Perhaps to tell her more of my life. She may, as I once guessed, actually have memory or processing issues: she really remembers only what she reads and what’s important to her.

I offered her the best of myself, and it was of no real value to her.

So I am no longer her teacher. She is no longer my wastet-le.

We will remain on the footing she dictates. I expect, practically speaking, it will mean the end of meaningful interaction between us. Magic was one of the few points we had in common and could speak about; I don’t think we’ve spoken one-on-one on any other subject, except perhaps Shay. Everything else she needs she will find in Harper or Shay.

I knew it would not last – none of this will - and still, I didn’t expect it to _hurt_. Perhaps it is already too late.

Harper came to my room later, and we talked for what proved to be several hours. It was… interesting. In some ways it echoed the time I explained the recurring to him: we were dealing with matters that went quite deeply into how I perceive and interact with the world, and although he did not always agree with what I was saying, he listened. I believe him when he says it matters to him, both from a practical perspective and because _I_ matter to him. Especially after talking to Katy, it helped considerably.

It was like that previous conversation – and others that perpetuate our usual cycle of interaction – in another way, too. I left myself vulnerable and forced myself to speak openly, answering what he asked (well, almost everything; we touched upon the exam and what followed it briefly, and that is a story only true necessity would compel me to tell). He gave me fragments in return – I could see what some of them cost him to voice, and I value them accordingly – but still the flow of information is largely one-sided. And the influence of his personality is such that I barely notice I’m being manipulated at the time – we can part after speaking and I will be reassured that I am doing sufficiently well with him, that there is a real chance we may walk in step thereafter. Then as I think over what I actually learned, or what we really agreed upon, it all fades, and I am reminded of all the dreams wherein the Silent watched from behind his ash-mask as I obediently tore away my skin.

For some time I have simply let this be. It is difficult, but I told myself that I could simply give him what he wanted and sooner or later he would reciprocate. I don’t remember if I ever fully believed it, but it clearly isn’t working that way. Or maybe it would, if I again began to ask questions… but it comes down to this: I cannot afford to push him too far. Perhaps he values me, perhaps he does see me as his friend, but he can walk away. I cannot. Even if I go home in defeat, never understanding why I dreamed them, the dreams will continue.

There is no escape from what you are.

We spoke of our partnership – how he is the first I have ever called akh-veleth, why it is uncommon in Thay, and how I could introduce him as such there, effectively demanding that he be treated as my equal socially.  To elevate a foreigner to such a height carries its own risks, of course, but with sufficient personal or political power it may be seen as a mere eccentricity rather than lack of pride or calculated insult.  That was almost purely factual, but he said that he appreciated my intelligence, enjoyed working in partnership, and was prepared to invest time and energy into maintaining that partnership. This despite the fact that I infuriate him with my choices and communication style.

He still desires my trust. I don’t think he’s ever really understood how both respect and distrust are founded in the knowledge of another person’s capabilities: what they can do to you, whether or not they currently seem inclined to strike. Or that his history of acting in what he sees as my best interest does not mean that trend will continue. Or that his silences and masks do not reassure…

We spoke about Shay, and about Sundabar. I am not surprised that he saw several things Shay has shown no signs of recognising. Our actions in that Long Death monastery may cause problems for me. Her defection has removed the foundation of our alliance, and, emotional involvement or no, it may not survive that change. If Shay wants her home monastery destroyed, then I… have to choose. It will be defended by the wizards of my Academy. If I side with them and kill my friends, I probably survive. If I side with Shay, I betray my home and my ambitions for a cause that isn’t clear, isn’t mine, and probably isn’t achievable. I would not expect a swift death.

Harper asked how that made me feel. As if that was relevant. As if it was even clear. I feel too much, now: old defences failing me or deliberately lowered, and instead of calm rationality and the simple balancing of self-preservation, needs and desires, I am left in this emotional morass that reminds me of nothing so much as the days before Khaizri’s death. Not in content – for which I am grateful – but in intensity and urgency, and the sheer unrelenting _constancy_ of it. There’s no escape, no time to rebalance: everything is hammering at you _now._

I should be chiding myself for wallowing uselessly in these pages instead of mastering myself and setting down merely the relevant facts. I don’t have the energy.

Harper asked also about my opinion of the recent developments between Shay and Katy. I tried to explain my position: that I have no intention of using this attachment against them, and it remains none of my business. It may affect what happens, and it may prove inconvenient – although I’ve seen no further interactions between them – but this is for them to handle.

Harper said that this was polite bullshit, and then asked the question that was apparently what he actually meant: was I concerned that Katy now had a greater hold on Shay’s loyalties than I had? I admitted to my misgivings along that line, both with Katy and with him. In fact, it’s stronger with Harper. Katy could be her lover, which is something new: Harper could replace me entirely, and Shay would only benefit for it.

It comes back to two things. I trust Shay, and I love her. If her choices now lead away from me, so be it.

We spoke of how he was in no hurry to return to Arrabar and the sekhme-at that awaited him there. I explained the term, this time, and he appeared to feel it was an accurate one. It was a small relief to confirm that I have not lost all of what I was; it was less reassuring to know beyond doubt that _is_ what Harper faces in the man Cort, particularly since I still have no idea if all I have seen was past or future.

I tried to speak gently, so that he knew it was not a threat, but I doubt there’s a way to convince someone that you’ve seen the weakness they cannot guard, yet do not intend to use it against them. So I gave him a balancing point, some knowledge of my own sekhme-at – that there was an experience that not without its value, and that, if ever he genuinely needed to know, I would explain. He was curious, naturally, but - a first for him – didn’t push.

It’s just as well. Even saying that much was like untangling brambles from around my veins.

Harper brought up this afternoon’s intended meeting with Drax, and why he feels I should not go alone to meetings with my superiors, why it might be to my advantage to have him standing ready to stab someone. This wasn’t quite in the same breath as him stating that he dislikes people threatening his friends and would find it difficult to permit someone to hurt them, but it was close. I wasn’t able to adequately explain how the relevant hierarchical sortings, etiquette and perceived power differentials interact: as previously mentioned, I don’t know if I really _can_ compress the unwritten rules into anything as obvious as Common speech.

 I mentioned, once again, that I dislike seeing him flay himself with the dead queen’s emotions every time he uses that cursed coral sword; he agreed to let Jorran look at it and told me he didn’t want me to worry about him. That’s a futile desire if ever I heard one. I have been worrying about him, in one way or another, long before I ever met the man.  

We also discussed Arrabar. Harper said: “I've been away from Arrabar for so long, even the method of my leaving was... muddled. I maybe built it up into something it wasn't, in all that time… I did expect that I might not live through it, just because it seems as though... at that point, at least, that every time I came home I would just lose a little bit more. And I suppose the conclusion that I had come to, purposefully or not, was that this could be the time that it took everything.” I record it verbatim because it is still somewhat opaque to me. I will work on it.

Nevertheless, he states that he wants to make a home, somewhere that each member of our party feels safe and comfortable, and, at least in part, that he wants Arrabar to be that place. If his family accept him again, that is; he isn’t sure how his sister will react to him, or (inferred, not stated) his sekhme-at, and if they desire his absence, he will provide it. There is certainly the shadow of something specific over the whole question; either he truly was responsible for the deaths of his brothers, or there is something unknown of equal weight. Or, I suppose, he is really that insecure.

I did tell him about the kirin, and the potential difficulties Jorran’s obvious disapproval of its binding may create for him with his hierarchy. Not that I think there’s much Harper can do to ameliorate them, should they truly arise (although one assumes that the Waukeenar are readily amenable to bribery); nor do I think it would be particularly useful leverage even if he were inclined to use it as such. It merely seemed like something he would appreciate knowing about someone who is under his protection.

He did mention that he finds Jorran much changed since the last time they were in Arrabar together, although he isn’t certain if his previous assessment of the cleric’s character is accurate; it were formed long ago and on little data. He is, I believe, somewhat surprised to find Jorran so devoted to his deity, although not that his piety does not seem entirely Waukeenar in nature. Like myself, his birth dedicated him to a certain position in life and the tenets and training that go along with it, but if you will wait until your subject is _fifteen_ before educating them, you must expect some flaws in the process…

And I finally asked him to define friendship for me. It was interesting: it was fuller than Shay’s definition of love, and more challenging. Harper seemed to consider his explanation messy and unserviceable, and it was certainly not concise, but it did name and define several aspects of my emotions and my choices about the three of them. That is a great deal to know, but still requires thought. I went flying to do so, and have written two candles’ worth of notes, and still I am not clear in my own mind…

… the kirin’s shore, watching the moon wane from full to a slender blue crescent. The waves rolled in, white and foaming: I looked down and saw they were not water, but a writhing, hissing mass of serpents, broiling in their own venom. I stepped back, seeing that my feet had left no mark at all on the shining sand. In the distance, a scarred grey viper with roughened scales reared its head above the wave, and I recognised the Thirsty. Then the Erratic was beside me. She asked, “Are you coming in?” Naked, she ran into the ocean of snakes, her skin cracking and peeling away in great sheets, then boiling away entirely in the venom. They closed above her head, eyes glittering in the thin moonlight and silver fangs bared.

The Silent stood behind me, his hand against my shoulderblade. His footprints were clear in the sand, deep and filling slowly with a viscous darkness. One serpent washed up on the shore, raised its massive head until its blue-eyed gaze fixed on the Silent. I could hear his heartbeat accelerate, and when the serpent began to back towards the ocean, he followed like a man in a trance. But he was not entirely under its control, because he hesitated at the edge of the waves. As the ocean-eyed serpent began to slither in among the rest, the Silent held out his hand to me. I took it, and followed him into the churning venom and the numberless serpents…

[ _a large blot sits alone in the centre of the next page]_

… a rough, irregular grey stone, about the size of an egg. I held it in my hands, turning it over, for what seemed like hours. It was unchanging and mundane, only a piece of rock. Words fell heavy into my mind, impressed there as absolute truth: _it begins here_. I bent my head, and as my breath brushed over the rock, it kindled into a sapphire flame…

… no surprise I should dream a symbol of the Spellplague under the circumstances – or the serpents of the night before last - but the stone seems an incongruity. It was so fixed a point, where my dreams are usually such transitory, unstable experiences. I could argue that perhaps some part of me decided that dreaming of a rock would be soothing, but I wouldn’t even convince myself.

Briefly, then: yesterday we returned to the temple of Mielikki, where Katy, Harper and Katy’s horse received a blessing. I mention this mainly because Harper did not bolt out of the temple this time and because the animal had sprouted a unicorn-like horn this morning. We took a commission from the cleric who dispensed the blessings to investigate recent happenings in the Glimmerwood. The forest is sacred to Mielikki, but there have been rumours of human sacrifices and disappearances.

Naturally I thought of Malarites. Malar is a god of savagery in the hunt, the patron of lycanthropes, and his rites involve the hunting of humans; he has always been opposed to Mielikki. So when we parted ways to make separate preparations, I persuaded Harper to lend me his cursed sword, although I believe he feared I might simply dispose of it - and I had it silvered. The effect was hideous, and I was unable to find someone to lift its curse, but it was a basic precaution. The craftsman claimed to be capable of improving the enchantment on my cloak; I gave it him to try. It appears that when I come to collect it, I will have to announce myself as ‘Crumb’. Harper bought a motheaten stuffed crow from the shop, apparently because he disliked its appearance, and set fire to it the moment he left the shop. It released a plume of black smoke, which took the form of a large bird, cawed loudly, and flew away.

I would have liked to inspect that closer.

Harper had renewed his acquaintance with the stable elf Katy had so intently procured on our last visit, and he had extended an invitation for all of us to meet him in a nearby bath house that evening. I quite liked the idea, if it could be sufficiently private, and I went to the house along with the others.

It was… not quite what I expected, and I reacted poorly. I was weak. Fear has always been a useful tool, but on this occasion it completely mastered me. Call it panic, perhaps, or terror. It was not a proportionate reaction to a perceived threat. It rendered me incapable of dealing with the situation in any meaningful sense, although I remained, I think, more or less coherent when I mumbled some excuses and left. Harper followed, attempting to persuade me to find a room by myself and stay there.

He said I was one of the most uptight people he had ever met, and while he understood that was based in necessity, it would be good for me to risk a ‘qualified adventure’ and lay that burden aside for a time. Which was, in essence, what I had intended to do, and could not. He looked, briefly, as one of my teachers might have, if I had first failed and then attempted to make a poor excuse.

I went outside. I tried to _polymorph_ , but I could not hold the necessary concentration. I held the spell that day, through everything; I had only minor failures when I began working on it in earnest. It is ludicrous that this bath house should inspire a terror that renders me less effective than I was during the most difficult experience of my life, but it was so. Was it because nothing rested on it but my own self-mastery – that the stakes were simply not high enough? I will try again when we return to Silverymoon, because I _must_ conquer this, but I wonder if that will meet with no greater success than my efforts to desensitise myself to my sekhme-at… and _that_ is worse than it’s been for years.

Well. Today we’ll go look into this issue in the Glimmerwood. It would be… pleasant… if it is a simple matter of destroying a nest of cultists. I don’t expect it, naturally…

… large ruin infested with revenants who bore the mark of Cyric and pockets of wild magic. Harper wandered into the first of the latter and was either transposed with or transformed into a large potted plant. He appeared very off-balance after I dispelled the effect, but told me to fuck off when I tried to ask what happened. He appeared to need some time to himself before rejoining us in exploring.

I tried to steer the others around the wild magic concentrations, but nevertheless Shay, Katy and I ended up on the Astral Plane briefly at one point. Harper was very… vocal when the effect ran its course and retuned us to the Prime Material Plane where we’d left it; considering what could have happened, it was a considerable relief. Eventually, after some careful exploration and experimentation, the relevant factors in the situation were determined as the following: there was a large magical presence in one sector; the wild magic pockets could be set off by living flesh, magic, or otherwise dispelled; if handled from a safe distance, the surge would not affect the person triggering them; no distance appeared to keep them from affecting Katy; we needed some of them disrupted to reach the nexus of magical energy.

Wild magic is more usually a natural phenomenon (or the after-effects of arcane catastrophe), but the sheer number of the pockets suggested a deliberate security precaution. In the course of rendering the way passable, Katy was subjected to a number of effects. These included sprouting a third eye in the centre of her forehead, doubling her size, glowing faintly, becoming a unicorn, generating a large quantity of lightning, vanishing, and becoming bright blue. Each manifestation was temporary and more or less harmless, save the last three. The lightning did significant damage to Shay and Harper. It appears that Katy was sufficiently interested in the Astral Plane to prolong the effect; I cast _sending_ to find her and persuade her to return while a panic-stricken Harper yelled at me to get her back. And the blueness… well, I couldn’t _dispel_ it. It’s possible a cleric might be able to make something of it once we get back. It was, unsurprisingly, the thing that Katy made the most fuss about.

The large magical presence was a huge, multicoloured and bejewelled naga. We saw it and backed off a small distance to discuss our next step. I was explaining to Harper exactly what a naga was (although it was not a spirit, bone or guardian naga, or in fact anything else I recognised) and had not quite gotten to their telepathy before it smugly interrupted us.

So we traipsed back up to its lair to talk with it more conveniently. It was quite as vain as its decorations had suggested, visibly preening when offered flattery, and was willing to explain itself. Its particular kind were favoured servitors of Cyric once, although they’ve not been seen since his power declined. This one was making preparations for his return, as it claims other cultists are doing all over the face of Abeir-Toril. It mentioned that it saw the marks of two gods upon Harper (Vhaeraun is probably one, and I think the other is most likely to be Mielikki; not that our association with her has been long, but he did receive her blessing yesterday). It was shortly after that comment that Harper stabbed it.

We were not at our best after dealing with the effects of the wild magic. I only had enough to _polymorph_ myself into the dinosaur, which had the fortunate side-effect of rendering me far too stupid to be incapacitated by its _hideous laughter_ spell. Unlike Harper. Katy was able, eventually, to club it to death with a fallen pillar. We retrieved the horses and got out of the Glimmerwood, making a brief camp between the forest and Silverymoon…

… reported first to the High Lord, who was much troubled by this additional news of Cyricist activity. He intends to call some kind of conference of the clerics of the city, apparently; it seems like a reasonable way to start, although one hopes that they will seek out additional perspectives.  As a reward he gave us a clockwork owl, which appears to be of the kind dubious historians attributed to some Dwarven clans as messengers. I’ve never read a reputable account of how they were supposedly animated, simply a lot of speculation. There is a crystal centred and apparently inert at the inmost workings of the gears, but the owl blinks anyway. If nothing else, there would be historians interested in it.

The Mielikkian Silverweave successfully restored Katy to her accustomed colouring. Harper questioned him at some length about the elves in the nearby High Forest. It seemed a non-sequitur at that point, but apparently it’s linked to that time an elf headed in that direction said that Katy resembled an eccentric acquaintance of his, called Aldred. That is, it might be a link to Katy finding the elf who sired her on her mother. Katy doesn’t seem particularly driven towards this goal, but Harper feels she should pursue it. In general, Harper finds a way to get what he wants, but in this case it was decided that we would return to Arrabar and the loose ends left there before looking into this.

When the evening was sufficiently advanced, I went back to the bath house. I dared not put it off, and expected I would muster no additional courage if I did. It was… odd. I took the usual precautions, but still the room was too large, and it took some minutes before I could disrobe and step into the water. It was very hot and pleasantly scented, but I cannot say I enjoyed it particularly.

I felt… vulnerable, and foolish, and watched, but the terror I’d expected to return never did.  I sat huddled in the bath for quite a short time, really, only long enough to prove to myself that I had done so, then I dried and dressed and left. But the fear I’d gone there to face and master… it never arrived.

I don’t know what the difference was. That the others were in no way observing me or my reactions? That I had been prepared for it? Or – and this seems more likely – that the bath house was never really the problem at all? That it was merely one trigger for an issue that may arise again – that some other minor difficulty will suddenly develop into a situation that drives me to flee in useless cowardice…

…the abesh-Re, its sharp beak scissoring into its own wing to clip the feathers, rendering it unable to fly. Its cry rings out, pain and protest, and an ash-heavy wind tumbles it from its perch…


End file.
